scs^n-K 


Sa/tf/fjc   S^ska/'SS, 


■fhivv-G-i  f  "7Vv***v 


CHRIST  THE  BREAD  OF  LIFE 


CHRIST 
THE   BREAD   OF   LIFE 


AN  A  TTEMPT  TO  GIVE  A  PROFITABLE  DIRECTION 

TO    THE    PRESENT    OCCUPATION   OF 

THOUGHT  WITH  ROMANISM 


JOHN  M'LEOD  CAMPBELL,  D.D. 


SECOND  EDITION 


JJmtbxm 

MACMILLAN     A  X  D     CO 
1869 

All  Rights  Reserved 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2012  with  funding  from 

Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


http://archive.org/details/christbreadoflifOOcamp 


CONTENTS. 


Preface  to  Second  Edition, i 

Receiving  Christ  as  the  Bread  of  Life  the  Practical  Aspect 

of  Faith, 7 

Subject  how  divided,         ......         9 

First, — Relation  of  the  Lord's  Supper  to  the  Life  ofLaith,         9 

Eternal  Life,  one  from  the  beginning, 

Psalm  xc,  Acts  xvii.  28,   . 

Faith  feeding  on  Christ,  St.  John  vi.  27-58, 

Divine  teaching  here  needed,  and  promised, 

Giving  liberty,  not  bondage,       .... 

Christ's  words  spirit  and  life,      .... 

Alleged  reference  of  St.  John  vi.  27-58  to  the  Lord' 

Supper,  the  two  views,  .... 

Results  of  error  here,  negative  and  positive, 
A  faith  demanded  alien  to  Christianity,  the  faith  of 

physical  mystery  not  of  a  spiritual  truth, 
Transubstantiation  the  extreme  development, 
Appeal  to  sense, 
Appeal  to  spiritual  discernment, 
These  distinct  while  harmonious, 
Advantages  of  the  latter,    . 
Question  suggested  here,    ......        32 

Difficulty  spiritual  not  intellectual,      .  .         .         -33 


CONTENTS. 


The  answei-  of  Christian  experience  is  conclusive,        .  36 
The  new  faith  objected  to,         .         .         .         .         -37 

Demands  a  further  development,         ....  38 

Evil  result  thus  perfected,            .....  39 

Deceptive  elements  of  peace  in  the  faith  of  the  Mass,  41 

We  cannot  serve  two  masters,    .....  42 
That  here  there  are  two  services  seen  historically  and 
in  the  light  of  Eternal  Life,   light  which  justifies 
present  fears,          ...... 


This  perfects  its  parallelism  with  the  elements  of  the 

Truth  and  the  danger  it  involves,    . 
Justice  to  Romanism  aimed  at,  ... 

Warning  to  Protestants  here  suggested, 
Perverted  and  deceptive  use  of  the  Lord's  Supper, 
Inference  which  this  suggests  to  Romanists  considered 
Felt  need  of  God  not  faith,         .... 
Our  misuse  of  the  Lord's  Supper  implies  self-deception 
Questions  for  self-examination, 
Relation  of  worship  to  knowledge,     . 
Awe  and  earnestness  why  accepted  as  religion,   . 
The  highest  awe  belongs  to  the  purest  light, 
To  witness  that  this  is  so  our  high  calling, 


47 
49 

52 
53 
55 
57 
59 
60 
62 
63 
65 
69 
7i 
73 


SECOND, — Feeding  upon  Christ  considered  as  expressing  the 

part  of  Man's  Will  in  Faith,  ....       74 

Jewish  and  Romanist  understanding  of  St.  John  vi. 

51,  how  related,     .......  75 

Figurative  use  of  "food,"   "feeding,"  in  relation  to 

mind,  ........  77 

St.  John  Lv.  5-34  connected  with  St.  John  vi.  27-63,  80 
Light  thus  shed  on  the  mystery  of  spiritual  life,  Fleb. 

vii.  16, 82 

The  Father's  will  Christ's  meat,         ....  83 

That  will  in  Christ  our  spiritual  food,  ...  85 


CONTENTS.  vn 


S7 


Eternal   Life  one  in  Christ  and  in  us,  St.   Matt,   xi 

27-30, 

This  unity  is  known  in  the  light  of  Eternal  Life,  .  89 
By  movements  of  the  will  is  spiritual  food  appropriated,  91 
Christ  the  true  vine,  ......        92 

Christ  the  light  of  the  world, 93 

Christian  experience,  ......        94 

Difficulties  suggested,  how  to  be  regarded,  .          .       96 

Faith  absorbed  in  its  object,       .....       97 

Yet  further  explanation  called  for,      ....       99 

A  departure  from  the  simplicity  that  is  in  Christ,  .  101 
Justification  and  Sanctification  unduly  separated,  .  103 
Their  unity,  seen  in  the  light  of  Eternal  Life,  .  .105 
Abraham  was  strong  in  faith,  giving  glory  to  God,  .  107 
True  relation  of  faith  to  Eternal  Life,  .         .          .      109 

Error  in  system  with  truth  in  the  life,   how  to  be 

thought  of,    .          .         .         .         .          .         .         .112 

Evils  still  great  and  difficult  to  estimate,     .  .  .114 

Risk  of  misconception,       .          .         .          .         .  115 

We  may  be  aided  by  considering  some  superficial  and 

inadequate  views  which  prevent  our  reaching  the 

simplicity  that  is  in  Christ,     .  .  .  .  .121 

Perplexities  that  arise,        .          .  .         .          .         .123 

Unsuccessful  endeavour  to  harmonize,         .         .         .127 
Light  reveals  unity,  .         .         .         .         .         .128 

Christian  Prayer,        .  .  .  .  .  .  .129 

In  the  name  of  Christ  and  according  to  the  will  of 

God, 131 

The  confusion  of  thought  as  to  Justification  exists  also 

as  to  Prayer,  .......      134 

The  Divine  Law  of  Prayer,        .         .         .         .  135 

Substitutes  for  the  Spirit  of  Prayer,   .         .         .         .137 

Romanist  and  Protestant,  .         .  .         .  139 

The  Scriptures  as  well  as  the  Church  put  between 

man  and  God,        .......      142 


vin  COXTEXTS. 


Third, — Development  of  the  Mass  from  the  Lord's  Slipper,     143 

True  importance  of  the  change,  .         .         .  145 

Meaning  of  the  Lord's  Supper  and  its  value,       .         .      147 
How  marked  at  the  first  by  praise  and  prayer,    .  149 

Symbols  in  time  identified  with  what  they  expressed 

first  in  fonn  of  words,  afterwards  in  thought,  .      153 

Hence  a  change  of  their  function  and  a  new  faith,        .      155 
Whose  strength  was  mystery,  not  love,        .         .  157 

Peace  in  darkness  the  fruit  of  faith  in  light,         .  159 

Light,  not  darkness,  saves,         .         .         .         .         .160 

The  quest  of  Orthodoxy  not  in  the  light  of  love  har- 
dens and  misleads,  .         .  .         .         .163 

Transubstantiation,  sought  to  be  connected  with  the 
Incarnation,  .  .  .  .  .  .  .166 

God  comes  near  to  man  in  love  therefore  in  light,       .      169 
The  two  aspects  of  religion  now  considered,        .         .      171 
Question  as  to  the  figurative  or  literal  use  of  words 
not  to  be  decided  by  the  words  alone,  but  by  the 
light  in  which  they  are  read,         .         .         .         .177 

Error  here  may  coexist  with  a  living  faith,  .         -179 

The  Eucharistic  Sacrifice,  to  be  taken  to  the  light  of 
the  Atonement,      .         .         .         .         .         .         .181 

Appeal  here  to  the  light  of  Christianity,  the  Christian 

consciousness  in  its  response  to  the  words  of  Christ,     186 
Result  looked  for  where  no  prepossession,  .         .188 

Even  where  there  is  may  be  reached,  .         .          .190 


PREFACE  TO  SECOND  EDITION. 

The  Infallibility  of  the  Church  and 
Transubstantiation  are  to  Protestants  the 
most  repulsive  aspects  of  the  teaching  of  the 
Church  of  Rome. — Yet  they  are  also  her  great 
attractions  to  those  who  pass  over  to  her  from 
Protestantism ;  and,  once  accepted,  form  her 
strongest  hold  upon  them. 

The  explanation  of  this  seeming  contradiction 
appears  to  me  to  be  that,  however  open  to  obvi- 
ous and  palpable  objections  these  two  doctrines 
are, — the  one  as  making  a  logically  inconsistent 
demand  on  reason,  the  other  as  opposed  to 
sense, — they  offer  themselves  as  severally  meet- 
ing deep  cravings  of  humanity — cravings  which 
may  be  so  strong  as  to  tempt  to  a  blind  grasp- 
ing at  what  promises  to  satisfy,  in  spite  of  all 
protestations  of  sense  and  reason. 

As  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Infallibility  of  the 


PREFACE. 


Church,  which  is  made  the  gate  by  which  all 
must  enter  in, — Cardinal  Wiseman  representing 
the  Church  as  a  city  to  which  many  roads  lead 
but  which  has  but  this  one  gate, — this  doctrine 
promises  the  peace  and  rest  of  certainty  to 
minds  seeking  a  sure  knowledge  of  God.  Dr. 
Newman  says  that  if  it  was  the  purpose  of  God 
to  give  us  certain  knowledge  of  Himself,  such  a 
purpose  implied  the  gift  of  an  Infallible  Church. 
The  answer  seems  obvious — that  such  an  Infalli- 
ble Church  would  need  a  witness  of  God  to  her 
infallibility  other  than  herself  to  justify  the  faith 
she  asks  from  us.  And,  besides,  if  we  consider 
it,  any  assumed  impossibility  in  God's  imparting 
certain  knowledge  of  Himself  to  individual  man 
would  be  the  impossibility  of  Revelation  at  all. 
But  such  answers,  though  just,  offer  nothing 
that  can  meet  the  craving  for  certain  knowledge 
of  God,  for  however  they  cast  doubt  on  the 
claim  made  for  the  Church  they  offer  no  other 
guide  to  certainty.  For  the  question  here  is  not 
one  as  to  the  authority  of  Scripture,  but  as  to 
the   sure   understanding   of  Scripture  ;    and    to 


PREFACE. 


substitute  the  right  of  private  judgment  for  the 
right  of  the  Church  to  interpret  with  authority, 
is  to  leave  the  seeker  for  certainty  to  depend  for 
certainty  ultimately  on  his  own  judgment  as  to 
what  the  Scriptures  teach.  Now  we  can  under- 
stand that  one  judging  to  the  best  of  his  ability 
may  feel  his  conscience  discharged,  and  may 
say,  "  If  I  am  in  error  I  at  least  am  not 
blameably  so."  But  this  is  altogether  different 
from  a  justifiable  certainty  in  holding  what  we 
believe.  Nevertheless  while  the  craving  for 
certain  knowledge  is  not  yet  awakened,  and  the 
free  exercise  of  independent  thought  is  enjoyed 
without  misgiving,  this  distinction,  however  im- 
portant and  undeniable,  is  not  duly  considered. 
But  it  is  otherwise  when  conflicting  interpreta- 
tions of  Scripture  perplex  the  searcher  for  truth, 
and  he  anxiously  asks  "What  am  I  to  believe?" 
No  rebutting  of  the  claims  of  Romanism  by  the 
exposure  of  the  vicious  circle  which  asks  faith 
for  the  Church  on  the  authority  of  Scripture, 
and  asks  faith  for  Scripture  on  the  authority  of 
the  Church,  can  do  more  for  such  a  man  than  at 


PREFACE. 


the  most  to  shut  him  up  to  uncertainty  as  to  a 
necessity  to  which  he  must  submit.  But  is  such 
a  necessity  what  the  heart  crying  out  for  God, 
even  the  living  God,  can  submit  to  ? — making, 
as  it  would,  intelligent  worship  impossible,  and 
God  the  unknown  God. 

How,  then,  is  the  unwarranted  claim  to  guide 
us  set  up  by  the  Church  of  Rome  to  be  satis- 
factorily dealt  with  ? — Not  in  the  negative  way 
of  urging  the  contradiction  that  is  in  that  claim, 
but  by  directing  faith  to  the  living  God  as  Him- 
self the  teacher  who  gives  us  certain  knowledge 
of  Himself.  "  It  is  written  in  the  Prophets 
'  They  shall  be  all  taught  of  God.' "  "  If  ye 
being  evil  know  how  to  give  good  gifts  unto 
your  children,  how  much  more  shall  your  Heav- 
enly Father  give  the  Holy  Spirit  to  them  that 
ask  Him." 

So,  also,  as  to  Transubstantiation.  The  crav- 
ing- to  which  Transubstantiation  addresses  it- 
self  is  not  so  obvious  as  that  craving  for  light 
to  which  the  doctrine  of  the  Infallibility  of  the 
Church  is  addressed.     Yet  as  Christ  is  the  de- 


PREFACE.  5 


sire — unconsciously — of  all  nations,  so  the  words 
"  Except  ye  eat  the  flesh  of  the  Son  of  man  and 
drink  his  blood,  ye  have  no  life  in  you,"  must  be 
the  recognition  of  a  true  need  of  humanity.  To 
the  dim,  unenlightened  feeling  of  this  need  the 
Church  of  Rome  presents  the  Eucharist  with  the 
faith  of  Transubstantiation,  and  the  blind  hunger 
felt  makes  welcome  the  assurance  of  the  teacher 
already  believed  to  be  infallible,  and  the  craving 
for  Divine  food  and  the  craving  for  Divine  light 
are  combined  in  giving  attraction  to  the  Church's 
promises  of  such  light  and  such  food. 

These  misleading  promises  of  the  Church  of 
Rome  I  have  endeavoured  (the  latter  here,  the 
former  in  "Thoughts  on  Revelation")  to  pre- 
sent in  the  light  of  the  truths  the  place  of  which 
they  usurp.  And  this  I  have  attempted  in  the 
first  place  with  the  hope  of  offering  help  to  those 
who  feel  these  attractions  to  Romanism  too 
strong  to  be  overcome  by  direct  arguments  ad- 
dressed to  sense  and  reason  ;  and,  in  the  second 
place,  and  chiefly,  with  the  desire  to  quicken 
interest  in  the  Truth  itself ;  which  further  end  is 


PREFACE. 


what  I  contemplate  as  "  giving  a  profitable  direc- 
tion to  the  present  occupation  of  men's  thoughts 
with  Romanism." 

It  will  be  an  important  gain  if,  in  seeking  to 
deliver  the  Lord's  Supper  from  that  deceptive 
though  solemn  interest  with  which  the  doctrine 
of  Transubstantiation  has  invested  it,  and  from 
the  perversion  which  renders  it  a  substitute  for 
the  true  feeding  upon  Christ,  I  do  something 
towards  restoring  it  to  that  function  and  that 
value  which  it  had  in  the  Church  at  the  begin- 
ning, bv  vindicating  for  it  its  true  character  as 
a  Divine  symbol  having  power  to  deepen  and 
strengthen  faith  in  the  truth  which  it  symbolizes, 
and,  as  a  witness  for  the  source  and  manner  of 
our  participation  in  Eternal  Life,  having  a 
Divine  fitness  to  nourish  and  develope  that 
life  in  us. 


Partick,  December,  186S. 


CHRIST  THE  BREAD  OF  LIFE. 

1 '  Thou  preparest  a  table  before  me  in  the  presence  of  mine 
enemies." — Psalm  xxiii.  5. 

OUR  relation  to  Christ  as  our  life  has  these  two 
expressions  given  to  it  in  the  records  of  our 
Lord's  teaching  preserved  for  us  by  the  Evan- 
gelist St.  John.  Our  Lord  says  "  I  am  the  vine 
ye  are  the  branches,"  and  He  says  "  I  am  the 
living  bread  which  came  down  from  heaven.  If 
any  man  eat  of  this  bread  he  shall  live  for  ever." 
Our  dependance  on  the  Son  of  God  for  the 
Eternal  Life  given  to  us  in  Him  is  thus  likened 
to  vegetable  life  as  that  is  present  in  a  branch, 
the  sap  flowing  into  it  from  the  tree,  and  to 
animal  life,  as  that  is  sustained  by  the  eating  of 
food. 

The  intention  of  this  teaching  is  undeniably 
practical,  viz.,  guidance  as  to  that  exercise  of  our 


CHRIST  THE  BREAD  OF  LIFE 


WILL  to  which  our  God  has  given  the  place  of 
being  the  link  between  the  high  purpose  of  His 
love  for  us  and  the  accomplisJmicnt  of  that  purpose 
in  us.  The  reference  to  vegetable  life  does  not 
of  itself  so  suggest  movements  of  will  as  that  to 
animal  life.  There  is  nothing  of  the  nature  of 
will  in  the  abiding  of  branches  in  the  tree — 
there  is  in  eating.  But  the  words  "  Abide  in 
me"  spoken  to  us  as  branches  add  what  the 
thought  of  the  passing  of  life  into  the  branch 
from  the  tree  does  not  of  itself  suggest.  We 
are  branches,  but  branches  to  which  it  belongs 
to  choose  whether  they  will  abide  in  the  vine, 
and,  as  such,  motives  for  abiding  are  addressed 
to  us.  "As  the  branch  cannot  bear  fruit  of 
itself,  except  it  abide  in  the  vine ;  no  more  can 
ye,  except  ye  abide  in  me." 

What  I  desire  now  to  keep  in  view  is  that 
practical  purpose  which  I  believe  our  Lord  to 
have  contemplated :  and  because  of  the  evil 
that  has  arisen  from  the  error  of  believing  the 
words  in  which  He  represents  the  life  of  faith 
as  feeding  on  Himself  to  have  been  spoken  in 


THE  PRACTICAL  ASPECT  OF  FAITH  9 

reference  to  the  ordinance  of  the  Lord's  Supper, 
I  shall  consider,  First,  this  error  and  what  has 
been  involved  in  it ;  Second,  I  shall  then  en- 
deavour to  illustrate  the  life  of  faith  considered 
in  itself  in  that  aspect  of  it  on  which  I  under- 
stand our  Lord  to  have  been  fixing  our  attention, 
viz.,  as  movements  of  the  will  in  response  to  the 
divine  will  in  Christ — our  livings by_Him  as  He 
by  the  Father ;  Third,  I  shall  in  conclusion  offer 
some  thoughts  on  the  development  of  the  Mass 
of  Romanism  from  the  ordinance  of  the  Lord's 
Supper,  so  far  as  that  development  affects  faith 
in  Christ  as  the  Bread  of  Life. 

FIRST, — Relation  of  the  Lord's  Sapper  to  the 
Life  of  Faith. 

That  Christ  is  the  Bread  of  Life  expresses 
that  which  from  the  beginning  has  been  the 
inmost  aspect  of  the  Divine  Life  in  man  :  there- 
fore songs  of  praise  which  have  come  down  to 
us  from  the  earlier  dispensation  fit  themselves  to 
our  experience  as  Christians ;  as  very  specially 
the  23rd  Psalm.     We  know  not  in  what  circum- 


10  ETERXAL  LIFE 

stances  the  faith  here  seen  triumphing  was 
originally  exercised,  or  what  measure  of  the 
light  of  Eternal  Life  is  to  be  recognised  in  it. 
But  in  the  fullest  light  of  Eternal  Life  to 
which  we  attain  we  can  use  it  as  the  natural 
expression  of  our  experience  of  salvation.  In 
some  Psalms  the  conflicts  recorded  and  the 
deliverances  and  victories  for  which  thanks  are 
given  have  so  much  of  the  impress  of  a  lower 
dispensation  upon  them  that  we  experience 
difficulty  in  using  their  language  in  a  higher  and 
more  spiritual  reference  ;  but  in  this  Psalm  it  is 
different.  There  is  no  room  here  for  the  objec- 
tion sometimes  urged,  that  our  use  of  the 
language  of  the  warrior-king  of  Israel,  who 
loses  not  that  character  as  the  sweet  singer  of 
Israel,  is  an  unwarranted  spiritualizing  of  lan- 
guage not  originally  so  intended.  For  as  to 
this  Psalm  we  may  say  that  it  is  spiritualized  to 
our  hand  : — as  when  the  being  led  in  "green 
pastures  and  by  still  waters "  is  interpreted  as 
"  restoring'  the  soul,"  "  leading  in  tJic  paths  of 
righteousness.  "     We  feel  ourselves  here  called  to 


ONE  FROM  THE  BEGINNING.  1 1 

communion  with  a  spirit  that  is  hungering  and 
thirsting  after  righteousness  :  we  cannot  think 
otherwise  of  one  who  has  learned  to  regard  all 
outward  paths,  however  some  of  these  might  be 
in  themselves  "  not  joyous  but  grievous, "  as 
"  green  pastures  and  still  waters,  "  because  to  his 
spirit  "paths  of  righteousness."  Nor  can  we 
doubt  that  to  this  man  the  sweet  taste  of  right- 
eousness has  had  in  it  the  element  of  Eternity — 
the  consciousness  of  having  chosen  the  better 
part  which  is  not  taken  from  those  who  make 
choice  of  it.  So  we  understand  his  confident 
expectation,  "  Surely  goodness  and  mercy 
shall  follow  me  all  the  days  of  my  life,  and 
I  will  dwell  in  the  house  of  the  Lord  for 
ever." 

For  the  meat  which  endures  unto  Eternal  Life 
has  ever  been  the  same, — Christ  the  Bread  of 
Life,  the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  for  ever. 
This  is  the  testimony  of  God,  that  God  has 
given  to  us  Eternal  Life  and  that  this  life  is  in 
His  Son.  This  in  the  Spirit,  is  ever  the  testi- 
mony of  the  Father  of  our  spirits.     "  Thou  hast 


12  PSALM  XC;    ACTS  XVII.   28. 

been  our  dwelling-place  in  all  generations"  are 
the  opening  words  of  that  Psalm  which  is  pre- 
sented to  us  as  "  a  prayer  of  Moses  the  man  of 
God ;"  and  coming  to  us  across  the  ages  it 
unites  its  teaching  with  that  of  the  Apostle,  that 
"  in  God  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being" 
— for  "we  are  all  His  offspring."  The  light  of 
the  early  dawn  is  one  with  that  of  noon-day, 
and  when  faith  in  God  is  seen  producing  and 
sustaining  a  peaceful  realization  of  existence  in 
one  having  the  sense  of  his  own  mortality,  the 
essence  of  such  peace  must  from  the  beginning 
have  been  that  which  it  is  now. 

I  therefore  feel  in  communion  with  the  Psalm- 
ist, while  in  the  more  perfect  light  now  shining 
I  accept  the  expression  of  his  faith  as  meet  for 
our  use,  and  to  these  thoughts  on  "  Christ  the 
Bread  of  Life  "  prefix  his  words  "  Thou  prepar- 
est  a  table  before  me  in  the  presence  of  mine 
enemies."  The  table  here  spoken  of  is  that 
spiritual  table,  the  food  on  which  is  that  bread 
of  life  which  hath  come  down  from  heaven. 
The  enemies  in  whose  presence  it  is  spread  are 


FAITH  FEEDING  OX  CHRIST.  1 3 

the  various  elements  of  that  fear  of  death 
through  which  we  were  all  our  lifetime  subject 
to  bondage.  The  transition  of  thought  is  from 
the  sense  of  freedom  from  fear  in  "walking 
through  the  valley  of  the  shadow  of  death"  to 
the  recognition  of  the  source  of  that  freedom, 
viz.,  our  participation  in  the  Eternal  Life  given  to 
us  in  the  Son  of  God.  And  the  form  of  the 
language  has  reference  to  the  manner  of  that 
participation,  viz.,  our  eating  His  flesh  and 
drinking  His  blood. 

The  teaching  of  our  Lord  in  the  light  of  which 
we  thus  use  the  Psalmist's  words  we  have  in  the 
Gospel  of  St.  John,  Chap.  vi.  27  to  58.  The 
passage  is  one  which  arrests  attention  and  which, 
even  while  it  is  felt  to  be  imperfectly  understood, 
is  vividly  remembered.  Our  Lord's  earnestness 
and  urgency  cause  us  to  feel  that  what  He  is 
teaching  is  of  fundamental  importance,  while  the 
form  of  expression  which  He  employs  is  not  only 
solemn  but  in  some  sense  mysterious,  or  at  least 
what  makes  a  peculiar  demand  for  spiritual  in- 
telligence.    The  difficulty  experienced  by  those 


1 4  DIVINE   TEACHING  HERE  XEEDED 

to  whom  the  words  were  originally  addressed, 
and  the  way  in  which  our  Lord  met  their  mur- 
muring,— reiterating  the  statement  at  which 
they  stumbled  instead  of  explaining  it, — contri- 
butes to  this  feeling  of  mystery,  which  is  still 
further  deepened  by  the  intimation  that  those 
alone  could  understand  it  who  were  specially 
taught  of  God. 

Yet  the  teaching  is  what  we  cannot  turn  away 
from.  We  cannot  rest  peacefully  in  ignorance 
of  its  meaning.  "  Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto  you, 
except  ye  eat  the  flesh  of  the  Son  of  man  and 
drink  His  blood  ye  have  no  life  in  you."  Here 
there  is  a  requirement  which  must  be  understood 
in  order  to  be  obeyed,  while  obedience  involves 
the  issue  of  Eternal  Life.  We  ask  and  we  cannot 
put  from  us  the  enquiry  "  what  is  it  to  eat  the 
flesh  and  to  drink  the  blood  of  Christ?"  while 
our  Lord  deepens  the  solemn  interest  which  He 
is  awakening  when  He  adds  "  As  the  living 
Father  has  sent  me,  and  I  live  by  the  Father, 
so  he  that  eateth  me  even  he  shall  live  by 
me."     But  these  words,  while  they  deepen  the 


AND  PROMISED.  lS 

interest  only  increase  the  mystery,  and  the 
more  simply  and  earnestly  we  set  ourselves  to 
understand,  the  more  we  feel  that  if  we  are  to 
understand  we  must,  as  we  are  told,  be  taught 
of  God. 

Rightly  considered,  the  imperative  necessity 
for  our  understanding,  along  with  the  need  of 
divine  teaching  that  we  may  understand,  awaken 
the  expectation  that  God  will  teach  us.  Our 
Lord's  words  to  the  murmuring  Jews  we  must 
see  to  have  been  not  words  of  rebuke  only,  but 
of  guidance  also  ;  and  we  are  saved  from  joining 
in  their  murmuring,  and  welcome  the  guidance 
which  they  did  not  accept.  "  No  man  can  come 
to  me  except  the  Father  which  hath  sent  me 
draw  him."  "It  is  written  in  the  prophets 
1  They  shall  be  all  taught  of  God.' "  "  Every 
man  therefore  that  hath  heard  and  hath  learned 
of  the  Father  cometh  unto  me."  I  say  we  shall 
accept  this  promise  of  Divine  teaching,  for  such 
it  is.  Nothing  else  could  meet  us  here.  Our 
Lord's  exposition  of  the  manner  of  the  life  of 
faith  is  a  demand  for  spiritual  intelligence  which 


i6 


GIVING  LIBERTY— NOT  BONDAGE. 


we  can  only  propose  to  ourselves  to  respond  to 
in  the  remembrance  and  faith  of  His  own  words 
"  If  ye  then  being  evil  know  how  to  give  good 
gifts  unto  your  children  how  much  more  will 
your  Heavenly  Father  give  His  Holy  Spirit  to 
them  that  ask  Him." 

It  has,  I  know,  come  to  pass  amongst  us 
that  intimations  of  our  dependence  upon  Divine 
teaching  for  light  are  felt  rather  as  perplexing 
than  as  encouraging  ;  arresting  us  by  a  practical 
difficulty  rather  than  setting  our  feet  in  a  large 
place  ;  intimating  a  necessity  for  a  miracle  rather 
than  declaring  a  Divine  constitution  of  humanity, 
to  the  freedom  and  blessedness  of  which  we  are 
called  to  rise.  But  of  such  a  feeling  we  find  no 
trace  at  the  beginning.  "Work  out  your  own 
salvation  with  fear  and  trembling,  for  it  is  God 
which  worketh  in  you  both  to  will  and  to  do  of 
His  good  pleasure."  Here  is  no  shadow  of 
difficulty  in  harmonizing  the  call  upon  us  to 
work  with  the  faith  that  God  is  working  in  us. 

I  feel  no  difficulty  in  cherishing  the  expectation 
of  entering  into  the  light  of  our  Lord's  words 


CHRIST'S  WORDS  SPIRIT  AND  LIFE.  1 7 

while  realizing  that  to  this  end  I  must  be  taught 
of  God.  I  could  not  cherish  that  expectation 
othenvise.  But  it  is  important  to  consider  the 
aspect  which  the  passage  now  engaging  our 
attention  presents,  when  in  connection  with  it 
our  need  of  Divine  teaching  that  we  may  under- 
stand is  so  emphatically  impressed  on  us.  Does 
not  this  imply  that  the  subject  of  our  Lord's 
teaching  here  is  peculiarly  spiritual  and  only  to 
be  spiritually  discerned, — the  same  impression 
which  we  receive  when  He  says  "  Doth  this 
offend  you  ?  What  and  if  ye  shall  see  the  Son 
of  man  ascend  up  where  He  was  before  ?  It  is 
the  spirit  that  quickeneth,  the  flesh  profiteth 
nothing.  The  words  that  I  speak  unto  you  they 
are  spirit  and  they  are  life.  " 

But  before  proceeding  to  illustrate  the  char- 
acter of  the  life  of  faith  as  a  feeding  on  Christ 
the  bread  of  life,  I  must  stop  to  notice  an  inter- 
pretation of  what  I  am  now  accepting  as  our 
Lord's  special  teaching  on  this  subject,  which,  if 
just,  would  preclude  my  so  using  it.  Not  that 
so  important  an  aspect  of  the  life  of  faith  could 

B 


1 8     ALLEGED  REFERENCE  OF  JOLLN  VI.  27-58 

be  presented  to  us  in  one  passage  only,  so  that 
the  loss  of  this  passage  would  leave  it  in  dark- 
ness. What  we  are  here  taught  pervades  the 
teaching  of  the  Lord  and  of  His  Apostles,  but 
we  cannot  give  up  the  peculiar  and  most  explicit 
setting-forth  of  the  teaching  here,  more  especially 
as  the  demand  on  us  to  do  so  is  the  demand  to 
accept  an  interpretation  which  would  introduce 
a  new  element  into  Christianity,  and  such  an 
element  as  wars  with  the  elements  which  our 
faith  already  accepts — so  wars  with  them  as  to 
render  the  attempt  to  combine  it  with  them  like 
the  attempt  to  serve  two  masters. 

The  other  interpretation  to  which  I  refer 
represents  our  Lord  as  here  speaking  not  of  the 
life  of  faith,  but  of  the  ordinance  of  the  Lord's 
Supper,  accepting  His  discourse  as  prophetic, 
and  having  as  its  object  to  declare  the  important 
place  and  function  which  that  ordinance  was  to 
have  in  His  future  Church.  This  is  the  inter- 
pretation adopted  by  the  Church  of  Rome. 

I  believe  the  relation  of  the  passage  in  ques- 
tion and  of  the  Lord's  Supper  to  each  other  to 


TO  LORD'S  SUPPER.  — THE  TWO  VIEWS.       19 

be  simply  this,  that  they  both  refer  to  the  same 
spiritual  reality,  that  ordinance  setting  forth  in 
act  what  this  passage  sets  forth  in  word.  They 
both  declare  the  manner  of  the  life  which  is  by  the 
faith  of  the  Son  of  God,  using  our  experience  of 
the  conscious  process  of  eating  and  drinking  to 
illustrate  the  self-appropriating  movements  of 
the  will  in  receiving  and  in  feeding  upon  the 
spiritual  food  which  is  our  Lord's  broken  body 
and  shed  blood ;  thus  helping  us  to  conceive  of 
the  intimacy  of  our  union  with  Christ,  and  of 
the  literal  truth  of  the  expression  "  partaking  in 
Him,"  through  our  knowledge  of  what  the  food 
which  we  eat  is  to  the  body  which  it  nourishes. 
By  both,  I  say,  are  we  thus  taught,  and  of  our 
profitable  meditation  of  the  one,  and  of  our 
worthy  participation  of  the  other,  the  fruit  is 
one  and  the  same ;  viz.,  living  obedience  to  the 
guidance  which  the  Lord's  words  bestow ;  living 
conformity  with  the  meaning  of  the  symbolical 
act,  in  which,  at  His  command,  we  have  engaged. 
Our  Lord's  teaching  of  the  life  of  faith  as  a 
feeding  upon  His  flesh  and  blood,  and  the  light 


20  RESULTS  OF  ERROR  HERE 

shed  upon  that  life  by  the  ordinance  of  the 
Lord's  Supper  being  thus  identical,  we  ought 
ever  to  combine  that  teaching  and  this  ordinance 
in  our  thoughts  ; — the  ordinance  helping  us  to 
realize  the  practical  demand  which  the  teaching 
makes,  and  the  teaching  helping  us  to  engage 
in  the  ordinance,  in  that  light  in  which  alone  it 
can  be  the  communion  of  the  body  and  blood  of 
Christ,  and  so  be  that  strengthening  to  our 
spirits  which  it  has  been  Divinely  fitted  for 
being.  So  it  was  at  the  beginning,  for  to  the 
experience  of  this  strengthening  we  trace  the 
frequent  use  of  the  Eucharist  in  the  Early 
Church.  Such  aid  in  fighting  the  good  fight  of 
faith,  being  conformed  to  the  death  of  Christ, 
they  could  not  fail  to  value  who  were  so  literally 
dying  daily. 

But  the  common  relation  of  the  passage  we 
are  considering  and  of  the  Lord's  Supper  to  the 
life  of  faith  not  being  recognised,  and  that 
interpretation  which  represents  the  former  as 
prophetic  of  the  latter  being  accepted,  these 
consequences  follow,— 1st,  we  no  longer  receive 


NEGA  TIVE  AND  POSITIVE.  2 1 

this  portion  of  our  Lord's  teaching  as  shedding 
light  on  the  life  of  faith  and  parallel  with  the 
words,  "I  am  the  vine  ye  are  the  branches." 
"  I  am  the  light  of  the  world  ;  he  that  followeth 
me  shall  not  walk  in  darkness  but  shall  have  the 
light  of  life."  And  2nd,  we  no  longer  have  light 
shed  on  the  manner  of  the  life  of  faith  by  the 
ordinance  of  the  Supper ;  the  character  of  that 
ordinance  being  entirely  changed  when  it  is 
represented  as  itself  the  subject  of  such  words 
as,  "  Except  ye  eat  the  flesh  of  the  Son  of  man 
and  drink  his  blood,  ye  have  no  life  in  you." 
This  double  loss,  though  negative,  will  still  if 
realized  be  found  to  be  very  great.  But  it  is 
the  positive  result  of  the  change  of  interpretation 
to  which  I  am  anxious  to  direct  attention — that 
result  which  I  have  ventured  to  call  the  intro- 
duction of  a  new  element  into  Christianity  and 
one  that  wars  with  what  we  know  Christianity 
to  be. 

A  new  element  is  introduced  into  Christianity 
when  the  words  "  Except  ye  eat  the  flesh  of  the 
Son  of  man,  and  drink  his  blood,  ye  have  no  life 


1/ 


22  A  FAITH  DEMAXDED 

in  you "  are  understood  to  be  spoken  of  the 
Lord's  Supper,  for  now  that  ordinance  claims  to 
be  the  medium  of  our  participation  in  Christ — 
that  apart  from  which  we  have  no  life  in  us. 
An  ordinance  which  bore  witness  to  the  naturc^of 
the  life  of  faith  has  become  a  mystery  cmbodymg 
spiritual  life  in  material  elements. — I  believe 
that  a  true  spiritual  discernment  could  in  the 
contemplation  of  this  change  anticipate  what 
the  historical  development  of  it  has  made  too 
certain ;  viz.,  that  in  its  new  character,  the 
Lord's  Supper  as  the  Mass  would  absorb  in  itself 
the  interest  which  Christ  has  to  us  as  our  Life. 

When  we  consider  this  matter  closely,  the  first 
thing  which  we  realize  is,  that  there  is  a  demand 
made  upon  us  for  another  manner  of  faith  than 
that  which  apprehends  Christ  and  the  grace  of 
God  in  the  gospel  of  our  salvation. 

The  apostle  Paul  describes  himself  as,  in 
preaching  the  gospel,  ' '  By  manifestation  of 
the  truth  commending  himself  to  every  man's 
conscience  in  the  sight  of  God."  Of  what  takes 
place  in  the  reception  of  the  gospel,  he  speaks 


ALIEN  TO  CHRISTIANITY. 


thus,  "  God,  who  commanded  the  light  to  shine 
out  of  darkness,  hath  shined  in  our  hearts,  to 
give  the  light  of  the  knowledge  of  the  glory  of 
God  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ."  Of  subsequent 
progress  in  the  Divine  Life,  he  says,  "  We  all,  with 
open  face  beholding  as  in  a  glass  the  glory  of 
the  Lord,  are  changed  into  the  same  image,  from 
glory  to  glory,  even  as  by  the  Spirit  of  the 
Lord."  Faith,  therefore,  as  respects  the  first 
commencement  of  the  life  of  faith,  and  as  respects 
its  subsequent  progress,  is  an  apprehending,  and 
a  growing  in  the  apprehension  of,  the  glory  of 
God  in  the  Gospel ;  and  so  it  is  a  passing  into 
and  an  advancing  in  light ;  and  that  light  the 
highest,  a  seeing  light  in  God's  Light. 

But  the  faith  which  the  Lord's  Supper  de- 
mands, when  that  ordinance  is  presented,  not  as 
a  witness  to  the  manner  of  life  of  which  Christ  is 
the  food,  but  as  itself  the  appointed  medium 
through  which  that  food  is  received,  is  the  faith 
of  a  mystery, — of  a  mystery,  not  in  the  sense  of 
something  hid  from  ages  and.  generations,  and  in 
due  time  revealed,  but  in  the  sense  of  something 


4 


24       THE  FAITH  OF  A  PHYSICAL  MYSTERY 

incapable  of  manifestation ;  and  so  it  is  a  faith 
which  receives  in  the  dark,  in  simple  reliance  on 
authority,  and  which,  in  the  same  reliance,  con- 
tinues holding  in  the  dark  what  it  understands 
not  nor  apprehends,  neither  expects  to  under- 
stand or  apprehend. 

It  is  said,  "  the  peculiar  and  appropriate  faith 
here  is  the  faith  of  the  words,  '  This  is  my  body,' 
'  This  is  my  blood.' "  I  believe  that  this  asser- 
tion is  not  warranted.  The  faith  proper  to  the 
ordinance,  and  in  the  exercise  of  which  alone  it 
has  vitality,  is  the  faith  of  that  which  the  ordi- 
nance means  and  expresses,  viz.,  the  faith,  that 
Christ's  flesh  is  meat  indeed,  and  His  blood  drink 
indeed  ;  and  not  the  faith  that  this  bread  is 
Christ's  flesh,  and  this  wine  is  Christ's  blood. 
J  But,  assuming  that  the  faith  here  called  for  is 
the  faith  of  the  assertion  supposed  to  be  made 
in  the  words,  "  This  is  my  body,"  "  This  is  my 
blood,"  such  faith  is  faith,  not  as  to  a  spiritual 
truth  spiritually  discerned,  but  as  to  a  physical 
mystery,  not  discerned,  but  assumed  on  autho- 
rity.     Such  faith,   supposing  it  to  be  required 


NOT  OF  SPIRITUAL   TRUTH.  2$ 

from  us,  is  still  manifestly  distinct  from  the  faith 
which  apprehends  the  glory  of  God  in  the  face 
of  Jesus  Christ. 

The  distinction,  which  I  expect  to  be  recog- 
nized when  thus  put,  between  the  faith  which 
receives  a  physical  mystery  and  the  faith  which 
apprehends  a  spiritual  truth,  is  a  difference  in 
kind,  not  in  degree.  The  physical  mystery 
seems  greatest,  in  the  form  which  the  doctrine 
has  in  the  Church  of  Rome.  The  measure  of 
the  corresponding  faith  called  for  is  therefore 
greatest  there  also.  But,  as  to  modifications  of 
Transubstantiation,  under  the  name  of  Consub- 
stantiation,  or  some  other  name  yet  undeter- 
mined, there  is  but  a  difference  of  degree,  so 
long  as  it  is  held  that  the  faith  required  from  us, 
in  partaking  of  this  ordinance,  is  the  faith  of  the 
assertion  supposed  to  be  contained  in  the  words, 
"  This  is  my  body,"  "  This  is  my  blood."  Say 
to  me,  "You  must  believe  that  literally  this  is 
Christ's  body,"  or  say  to  me,  "  You  must  believe 
that  mystically  this  is  Christ's  body,"  the  impor- 
tant fact  remains,  that  what  I  am  required  to 


TRAXSUBSTAXTIA  TIOX 


exercise  is,  a  faith  about  the  bread  and  the  wine 
as  the  medium  in  which  I  receive  Christ,  and 
7iot  a  faith  that  simply  contemplates  Christ,  and 
realizes  that  He  is  my  life. 

I  say  the  faith  which  the  less  startling  forms 
of  thought  on  this  subject  call  for,  is  the  same  in 
nature  with  that  which  receives  Transubstanti- 
ation,  differing  only  in  degree.  But,  inasmuch 
as  Transubstantiation  is  the  fullest  development 
of  this  conception  of  the  ordinance,  and  the 
physical  mystery  greatest  so  presented,  there  is 
an  attraction  which  Transubstantiation  has  to 
minds  that  have  once  come  to  conceive  of 
special  glory  to  God  in  the  faith  of  mystery, 
which  the  modifications  of  it  have  not ;  or  rather 
I  should  say,  the  cravings  which  they  in  measure 
feed  it  alone  can  satisfy.  If  the  very  essence  of 
the  faith  exercised,  and  of  the  glory  given  to 
God  in  exercising  it,  be,  that  I  believe  on  author- 
ity that  which  is  not  light  to  me,  but  altogether 
darkness,  each  ray  of  light  shed  on  the  object  of 
such  faith,  if  light  could  be  shed  upon  it,  would 
just  diminish   by  so  much  the  amount  of  the 


THE  EXTREME  DEVELOPMENT.  V 

demand  for  faith,  and,  therefore,  the  amount  of 
glory  to  God,  which  it  is  put  in  my  power  to 
give.  And  all  modification  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  doctrine  is  but  the  attempt  to  let  some 
rays  of  light  fall  upon  it.  Therefore  the  endeav- 
our of  those  who  say  "  here  is  a  mystery,"  and 
still  attempt  to  qualify  the  mystery  by  such 
comparisons  as  that  to  the  presence  of  the  soul 
in  the  body  is  self-contradictory.  They  are 
trying  to  satisfy  what  they  would  call  a  sceptical 
craving,  at  the  same  time  that  they  are  demand- 
ing an  implicit  faith ;  and  in  proportion  as  that 
demand  for  implicit  faith  awakens  a  response  in 
their  disciples,  will  the  attempt  at  explanation 
not  only  lose  interest,  but  become  distasteful. 
And  hence  the  fact,  that  earnest  mental  occupa- 
tion with  this  matter  is  so  often  found  to  end  in 
Romanism  ;  while  those  who  have  first  given 
the  downward  impetus  to  the  stone,  stand 
wondering  and  lamenting  that  it  rolls  so  far. 

We  know  that,  in  the  mind  of  every  Romanist, 
one  very  peculiar  claim  to  the  adhesion  of 
Christians  possessed  by  his  Church  is,  that  that 


2  8  APPEAL   TO  SENSE. 

Church,  and  that  Church  alone,  has  the  bread  of 
life  to  administer  to  the  faithful ;  this  language 
being  used  with  reference  to  Transubstantiation  : 
and  I  have  known  the  claim  so  urged,  the  first 
attraction  of  the  Church  of  Rome  to  Protestants 
who  have  eventually  become  Romanists.  And 
when  the  teaching  of  our  Lord  in  the  words, 
"Except  ye  eat  the  flesh  of  the  Son  of  Man, 
and  drink  his  blood,  ye  have  no  life  in  you,"  is 
understood  as  having  the  Lord's  Supper  as  its 
subject ;  and  when,  in  harmony  with  this  inter- 
pretation, the  words  of  the  institution  itself, 
"This  is  my  body,"  "This  is  my  blood,"  are 
understood  as  demanding  the  faith  as  to  the 
elements  of  bread  and  wine,  that  they  are  the 
Lord's  body  and  blood,  I  cannot  wonder  at  such 
a  result, — the  Romanist  form  of  the  doctrine 
being  at  least  simpler  and  more  self-consistent. 

I  do  not  forget  the  argument  against  Tran- 
substantiation, that  it  not  only  is  a  mystery,  but 
also  contradicts  our  senses.  To  ask  me  to 
believe  in  the  dark,  is  not  certainly  to  go  so  far 
as  to  ask  me  to  believe  in  contradiction  to  what 


APPEAL  TO  SPIRITUAL  DISCERNMENT.      20, 

I  naturally  feel  to  be  light ;  and  this  disadvantage 
Transubstantiation  seems  to  have,  as  compared 
with  other  conceptions  of  the  actual  presence  of 
Christ  in  the  bread  and  wine.  Nor  would  I 
make  light  of  the  confidence  with  which  any 
fellow  Protestant  appeals  to  our  bodily  senses, 
in  his  rejection  of  Transubstantiation.  But, 
inasmuch  as  our  bodily  senses  are  certainly  not 
our  highest  faculties  of  perception,  I  feel  that 
the  contradiction  it  presents  to  them,  does  not 
weigh  more  with  me, — I  would  say,  does  not 
weigh  so  much  with  me  as  the  contradiction  it 
presents  to  a  higher  endowment  with  which  God 
has  endowed  man,  viz.,  that  faculty  of  perception 
which  distinguishes  him  as  a  spiritual  being — 
the  inhabitant  not  merely  of  a  physical,  but  of  a 
spiritual  universe — that  in  man  which  makes 
him  capable  of  knowledge  not  of  nature  only, 
but  of  nature's  God.  What  is  the  physical 
sense  of  hearing  in  comparison  with  that  spiritual 
sense  which  is  addressed  when  our  Lord  says  to 
us,  "  Hear  and  your  soul  shall  live  ?"  What  the 
sight  that  makes  the  light  of  the  sun  available, 


30     THESE  DISTINCT  WHILE  HARMONIOUS. 

in  comparison  with  that  which  enables  us  to 
rejoice  in  the  light  of  the  Sun  of  Righteousness  ? 
When  partaking  of  the  Lord's  Supper,  I,  by  my 
bodily  senses,  take  cognizance  of  the  bread  and 
wine,  and  know  what  they  are,  as  I  consciously 
partake  of  them  ;  while,  in  my  spiritual  nature, 
I  deal  with  the  spiritual  realities  which  they 
symbolize,  and  discern  the  Lord's  body  broken 
for  me,  His  blood  shed  for  the  remission  of  my 
sins,  which  I  thankfully  receive,  and  consciously 
feed  upon,  as  the  spiritual  food  of  the  Divine 
Life.  The  two  conjoined  processes  are  quite 
distinct.  They  are  both  experienced  realities. 
In  neither  is  there  any  mystery.  Nothing  is 
assumed  to  be  what  it  is  not  felt  and  proved  to 
be.  If,  as  to  the  first  part  of  this  experience,  I 
may  have  sufficient  confidence  in  my  bodily 
senses  to  refuse  on  their  testimony  to  believe 
that  what  seemed  bread  and  wine  were  not 
bread  and  wine,  but  were  transubstantiated  into 
the  actual  flesh  and  blood  of  Christ,  I  feel  at 
least  equally  authorised  in  the  confidence  which 
justly    accompanies    the    exercise    of    spiritual 


ADVANTAGES  OF  THE  LATTER. 


perception,  to  believe  that  the  spiritual  realities 
which  I  have  spiritually  discerned,  the  spiritual 
food  of  which  I  have  consciously  partaken,  was 
just  what  to  my  spiritual  apprehension  it  ap- 
peared ;  existing  as  a  spiritual  existence  alto- 
gether in  the  region  of  spirit,  and  not  clothed 
with  a  material  form,  or  existing  in  the  material 
substance  which  to  the  outward  senses  is  bread 
and  wine. 

Of  course  there  is  this  difference  between  the 
contradiction  which  Transubstantiation  presents 
to  the  spiritual  sense,  and  that  which  it  presents 
to  the  bodily  senses,  that  all  see  the  bread  and 
wine,  and  may  feel  entitled  to  say,  "  these  are 
but  bread  and  wine,"  while  the  spiritual  realities, 
which  they  represent,  are  seen  only  by  those 
who  exercise  spiritual  vision.  But,  assuming 
that  a  man  has  both  these  preparations  for 
dealing  with  this  matter,  and  while  his  bodily 
senses  bear  to  him  the  testimony  that  they  bear 
to  all  men,  that  his  spiritual  eye  is  opened  to 
see  the  appropriate  food  of  Eternal  Life  pre- 
sented to  him  in  Christ,  I  believe  that  such  a 


32  QUESTION  SUGGESTED  HERE. 

man's  spiritual  perceptions  afford  to  him  as 
direct  a  contradiction  to  the  doctrine  of  Tran- 
substantiation  as  his  physical  perceptions  do. 
Now,  though  the  modifications  of  the  doctrine 
of  the  real  presence  of  Christ  in  the  elements  to 
which  I  have  referred,  cease  to  contradict  our 
bodily  senses  as  directly  as  Transubstantiation 
does,  they  continue  to  contradict  our  spiritual 
perceptions,  the  perceptions  which  pertain  to  our 
higher  nature,  and  to  that  region  in  which  Christ 
and  eternal  life  are  seen  and  known. 

Those  who  have  gone  along  with  me  thus  far 
may  feel  that  I  have  said  enough  to  justify  my 
estimate  of  the  evil  involved  in  interpreting  the 
words  of  our  Lord,  "  Except  ye  eat  the  flesh  of 
the  Son  of  man,  and  drink  his  blood,  ye  have  no 
life  in  you,"  as  referring  to  the  ordinance  of  the 
Lord's  Supper. 

Yet  some,  from  a  deep  sense  of  our  mental 
limits  and  of  the  danger  of  being  unduly  in- 
fluenced by  the  inability  to  form  consistent  and 
harmonious  views,  may  be  disposed  to  say,  "  No 
doubt   the  manner  of  faith,  which  receives  the 


DIFFICULTY  SPIRITUAL.  33 

words,  '  This  is  my  body,'  '  This  is  my  blood/ 
as  literally  or  mystically  true  of  the  bread  and 
the  wine,  is  distinct  from  the  faith  that  receives 
Christ,  nor  is  the  exercise  of  the  former  within 
the  region  of  spiritual  intelligence.  But  may 
not  both  these  faiths  be  required  from  us  ? 
May  we  not,  as  to  our  ordinary  experience, 
be  called  to  the  direct  faith  of  Christ,  while  as 
to  the  Lord's  Supper  we  are  called  to  faith  in 
the  mystery  of  His  presence  in  the  bread  and 
the  wine  ?  And  may  not,  as  to  both  demands, 
the  obedience  of  faith  be  due  from  us  ? n 

My  difficulty  as  to  such  a  combination  is 
spiritual  rather  than  intellectual,  and  belongs  to 
the  experience  of  the  life  of  faith. 

Without  anticipating  the  direct  exposition  of 
the  meaning  of  feeding  upon  Christ,  I  ask  you 
to  endeavour  to  realize,  using  what  materials 
for  so  doing  your  experience  may  afford,  the 
consciousness  that  accompanies  that  obedience 
of  faith  which  is  the  reception  of  the  gospel — 
your  consciousness  in  receiving  the  record  that 
God  has  given  to  us  Eternal  Life  in  his  Son.     In 


34  THE  ANSWER  OF 

this  exercise  of  faith  is  not  the  Eternal  Life 
seen  by  you  in  Christ  ?  Are  not  its  elements 
the  objects  of  spiritual  apprehension  ?  Is  not 
their  relation  to  your  own  inner  man  spiritually 
intelligible  ?  Is  not  the  movement  of  your  own 
being  in  which  you  appropriate  them  a  conscious 
movement  ?  Is  not  the  participation  in  Eternal 
Life  which  results — the  being  spiritually  quick- 
ened, also  a  conscious  experience  ?  And,  in  all 
the  variety  of  connection  with  outward  means  of 
grace  in  which  this  experience  is  known,  is  it  not 
universally  one  and  the  same  ?  In  relation  to 
joy  or  to  sorrow,  when  engaged  in  active  duty 
or  in  solitary  meditation,  dealing  with  men  in 
the  name  of  Christ  or  drawing  near  to  the 
Father  in  that  name, — in  all  things  is  not  Christ 
the  same  ?  Eternal  Life  the  same  ?  the  renew- 
ing of  your  inner  man  essentially  one  process  ? 
— that  essential  oneness  being  at  once  the  reason 
of  the  command,  "  Whatsoever  ye  do  in  word  or 
deed,  do  all  in  the  name  of  the  Lord  Jesus,"  and 
the  ground  of  the  assurance  "that  all  things 
work  together  for  good  to  them  that  love  God." 


CHRISTIAN  EXPERIENCE  3  5 

I  ask  you  thus  to  realize  the  life  of  faith,  in  its 
outward  variety,  in  its  inward  oneness,  and  then 
to  consider  what  you  are  required  to  combine 
with  this  experience  as  another  manner  of  feed- 
ing upon  Christ,  when  you  are  called  to  believe 
that  Christ  and  Eternal  Life  are  presented  to  you 
in  the  Lord's  Supper  in  the  bread  and  the  wine. 
The  combination  proposed  you  will  find  impos- 
sible. You  may  pass  from  the  one  manner  of 
faith  to  the  other,  but  in  so  doing  you  will  not 
be  continuing  to  receive  the  one  Eternal  Life. 
The  sap  of  the  vine  will  not  be  felt  to  flow  into 
you  in  the  exercise  of  this  new  faith,  as  it  did  in 
that  of  the  faith  which  you  have  hitherto  cherish- 
ed. Proceed,  with  careful  self-conscious  discern- 
ment of  the  conditions  of  your  own  spirit,  and 
you  will  speedily  find  that  no  setting  yourself  to 
believe  about  the  bread  and  the  wine  that  Christ 
is  in  them  literally  or  mystically  can  feed  that 
life  into  the  fellowship  of  which  the  direct  faith 
of  Christ  had  introduced  you,  and  which  all 
exercise  of  the  same  faith  had  nourished  and 
strengthened.       Every    other    employment    to 


3 6  IS  COXCLUSIVE. 


which  God  has  called  you,  and  in  which  you 
have  engaged  as  a  Christian  man,  has  been  found 
to  be  what  you  could  so  engage  in  as  in  it  to  be 
consciously  feeding  upon  Christ.  But  in  that 
which  is  now  proposed  to  you  this  consciousness 
can  no  longer  accompany  you.  Though  you 
submit  your  mind  to  the  mystery  presented  to 
you — though  you  believe,  however  inconceivable 
the  assumption  seems,  that  Christ  is  in  the  bread 
and  the  wine — still  there  is  no  consciousness  of 
feeding  upon  Christ.  Your  acceptance  of  this 
mystery  in  no  degree  adds  to  what  the  medita- 
tion of  the  work  of  Christ  has  wrought  in  your 
spirit ;  nor  does  this  gazing  on  darkness — how- 
ever solemn  and  awful  the  darkness — forward 
that  progress  in  the  Divine  Life  to  which  you 
were  conscious  while  "  beholding  as  in  a  glass  the 
glory  of  the  Lord." 

This  then  is  the  difficulty,  viz.,  the  experience 
of  the  impossibility  of  feeding  through  the  faith 
of  this  mystery  that  conscious  Eternal  Life 
which  has  been  quickened  and  nourished  by  the 
direct  faith  of  Christ. 


THE  NEW  FAITH  OBJECTED  TO  37 

I  have  said,  that  when  the  language  of  our 
Lord  in  the  6th  chapter  of  St.  John,  with  refer- 
ence to  the  life  of  faith,  is  interpreted  as  the 
exposition  of  the  nature  and  function  of  the 
Lord's  Supper,  that  ordinance  "ceases  to  be 
a  testimony  to  our  relation  to  the  engrafted 
word,  which  is  able  to  save  our  souls,  and 
becomes,  so  to  speak,  the  rival  of  that  word  as 
the  food  of  Eternal  Life."  It  may  be  asked, 
how  can  it  be  the  rival  of  the  living  word  as  the 
food  of  Eternal  Life,  if  practically  it  proves  not 
to  be  food  for  that  life  at  all  ? 

Certainly  this  seeming  contradiction  could  not 
arise  if  the  true  conception  of  Eternal  Life  were 
adhered  to,  and  a  spiritual  discernment  freely 
exercised  as  to  the  result  of  attempting  to  sustain 
that  life  by  this  manner  of  food.  But,  in  point 
of  fact,  the  seeming  contradiction  is  presented  to 
us  ;  and  it  arises  in  this  way.  The  recognition 
of  the  Lord's  Supper  as  the  medium  of  Eternal 
Life,  in  virtue  of  the  assumed  actual  presence  of 
Christ  in  the  bread  and  wine,  involves  a  new 
conception  of  the  nature  of  Eternal  Life.      For  it 


3  8        DEMANDS  FUR  THER  DE  VEL  OPMENT. 

becomes  necessary  to  believe  not  only  that 
Christ  is  in  that  in  which  He  is  not  discerned  to 
be,  but  also  that  Christ  is  fed  upon  while  there 
is^jip  consciousness  of  feeding  upon  Him  ;  so 
that  the  fact  of  our  being  fed  comes  to  be  as 
much  taken  on  trust  as  the  fact  of  Christ's  pres- 
ence in  that  which  we  eat  and  drink — both  facts 
being  alike  assumed  as  parts  of  the  one  mystery. 
But  this  being  granted,  as  a  man  believes  that 
Christ  is  in  the  bread  and  the  wine,  so  he  be- 
lieves that,  having  partaken  of  the  bread  and 
the  wine,  he  has  fed  upon  Christ.  To  ask  a  man 
to  take  this  experience  to  the  light  of  the  ex- 
perience of  feeding  upon  Christ  by  faith  is  to 
demand  light  where  the  essential  character  of 
the  experience  is  taking  upon  trust  in  the  dark. 
And  the  question  "  Are  you  consciously  fed  ? " 
would  be  as  irrelevant  as  to  ask  "  Do  you  discern 
Christ's  presence  in  the  bread  and  the  wine  ? " 

And  thus  an  ordinance  which  does  not  con- 
sciously feed  Eternal  Life  may  become,  and 
does  become,  the  rival  of  the  engrafted  word 
which  does  ;  because  the  faith  exercised  dispenses 


E  VI L  RESUL  T  THUS  PERFE  C  TED.  3  9 

with  such  consciousness,  and  permits  and  author- 
izes the  conviction  that  without  that  conscious- 
ness we  are  experiencing  the  fulfilment  of  these 
words,  "Whoso  eateth  my  flesh,  and  drinketh 
my  blood,  hath  eternal  life." 

I  say  the  ordinance  may  become,  and  does 
become  the  rival  of  the  living  word.  For  this  I 
believe  to  be  the  true  conception  of  the  relation 
in  which  they  come  to  stand  to  each  other :  and 
that  the  ultimate  ground  of  objection  to  that 
conception  of  the  ordinance  against  which  I 
contend  is  that  it  makes  it  the  antagonist  of 
Christ. 

Viewed  on  the  side  on  which  I  have  at  present 
approached  it  such  a  rival  to  the  true  bread  of 
life  may  appear  little  formidable ;  for  I  have 
contemplated  its  claims  as  they  will  appear  to 
one  having  experience  of  the  life  of  faith,  and 
clear  discernment  of  the  nature  of  that  life. 
One  so  prepared  to  deal  with  the  subject  ought 
not  to  be  in  much  danger.  But  in  the  ab- 
sence of  such  experience,  or  even  where 
there  is  a  measure  of  that   experience    in  the 


4°  DECEPTIVE  ELEMENTS  OF  PEACE 

absence  of  such  discernment,  the  danger  is  not 
small. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  powerlessness  of  the  faith 
of  the  presence  of  Christ  in  the  bread  and  wine, 
to  yield  to  the  spirit  of  man  what  the  direct 
faith  of  Christ  yields  ;  but  I  have  not  spoken  of 
what  it  has  power  to  yield.  I  have  used  the 
expression  "  solemn  and  awful  darkness"  in 
speaking  of  that  on  which  this  faith  calls  us  to 
gaze,  instead  of  the  glory  of  God  in  the  face  of 
Jesus  Christ.  How  solemn  and  awful  we  may 
not  easily  realize  when  not  actually  (as  we  dare 
not  be,)  cherishing  the  faith  of  that  mystery. 
But  we  can  understand  that  to  believe  that 
Christ  is  in  the  bread  and  the  wine  is  to  see 
these  material  substances  invested  with  an  over- 
awing Divinity,  before  which  our  souls  prostrate 
themselves  as  before  God;  that,  to  proceed  to 
take  the  material  substance  of  which  we  so 
conceive  into  our  lips  is  to  perform  an  act  of 
deep  mysterious  interest,  with  which  there  natu- 
rally are  combined  thoughts  of  marvellous  con- 
descension on  the  part  of  God — of  inconceivable 


IN  THE  FAITH  OF  THE  MASS.  41 

obligation  on  our  own  part ;  and  that  to  re- 
flect on  what  has  taken  place,  and  that  now 
that  word  is  fulfilled  in  us — "Whoso  eateth 
my  flesh,  and  drinketh  my  blood  hath  Eter- 
nal Life ;  and  I  will  raise  him  up  at  the  last 
day,"  is  to  feel  emboldened  to  cherish  peace 
and  confident  hope  as  to  the  invisible  and 
the  eternal  ;  while  all  this  combination  of 
awe,  and  thankfulness,  and  triumphant  hope, 
is  sealed  to  us  by  the  persuasion,  that  to 
doubt  the  reality  of  the  grounds  on  which 
it  rests,  would  be  to  doubt  the  power  and 
truth  of  God. 

Now  here  are  elements  of  an  experience 
which,  while  it  has  no  claim  to  be  called  Chris- 
tian experience  or  fellowship  in  the  life  of  Christ, 
may  yet  too  easily  be  accepted  as  religion,  and 
earnest  and  solemn  religion  too,  even  where 
Christian  experience  is  not  unknown.  How 
much  more  easily  where  serious  emotions  and 
experiences  of  awe  and  veneration  are  all  that 
the  human  spirit  has  yet  recognised  in  itself  as 
religion ;  and  of  how  many  esteemed  by  them- 


42  WE  CANNOT  SERVE  TWO  MASTERS. 

selves  and  by  others  religious  may  this  be  all 
that  can  be  said  ! 

But  that  which  enhances  the  danger  and 
makes  it  to  extend  widely  is  that  however 
antagonistic  this  faith  of  Christ's  presence  in  the 
ordinance  is  to  the  direct  faith  of  Christ  revealed 
in  us  the  hope  of  glory,  and  however  antagonistic 
this  taking  for  granted  that  we  are  partaking  in 
the  food  of  Eternal  Life  is  to  looking  for  and 
resting  in  the  testimony  of  the  Spirit  bearing 
witness  with  our  spirits  that  we  are  the  children 
of  God,  still  it  is  not  as  something  instead  of,  but 
as  something  besides  the  faith  of  the  gospel  that 
the  faith  of  this  mystery  is  inculcated ;  and 
so  men  not  discerning  the  contradiction  may 
attempt  to  combine  both. 

I  believe  such  an  attempt  to  be  the  attempt  to 
serve  two  masters.  If  any  reply  and  say,  "  No, 
for  surely  some  have  combined  both  ; "  if  this  be 
spoken  with  reference  to  men  of  God  within  the 
Church  of  Rome,  or  other  churches  holding  cog- 
nate views  in  this  matter,  I  say  the  day  of  the 
Lord   will  reveal   what   has   been   indeed   that 


THAT  HERE  THERE  ARE  TWO  SERVICES   43 

feeding  upon  Christ  through  which  they  have 
come  to  bear  His  image — what  of  that  which 
they  held  has  determined  what  they  were,  and 
what  had  no  part  in  that  result. 

As  to  what  I  have  at  present  characterised  as 
two,  and  mutually  opposed  services,  there  is  abun- 
dant historical  evidence,  that  in  proportion  as 
the  food  of  life  is  believed  to  be  received  in  the 
bread  and  wine,  it  is  less  and  less  sought  through 
belief  of  the  truth.  Nay,  in  proportion  as  that 
is  conceived  of  as  the  highest  act  of  religion,  and 
the  act  in  which  there  is  assumed  to  be  the  most 
absolute  participation  in  Christ  which  is  most 
entirely  away  from  the  region  of  consciousness 
and  of  spiritual  discernment,  that  region  loses  its 
interest,  and  men  withdraw  from  it.  We  find 
it  more  and  more  spoken  of  as  a  region  of  mists 
and  uncertainties,  a  region  in  which  no  clear 
light  shines,  a  region  where  no  voice  gives  forth 
a  certain  sound,  or  speaks  with  authority  ;  inso- 
much, that  he  who  would  attain  to  certainty,  and 
feel  his  feet  on  a  rock,  is  told  that  he  must  turn 
elsewhere  than  inward.     The  voice  of  the  Living 


44  SEEM  HISTORIC  A  LLY 

Word  being  thus  treated  as  an  uncertain  sound, 
the  way  is  prepared  for  obedience  to  an  external 
authority,  and  the  perplexed  spirit  seeking  re- 
pose and  rest  is  fain  to  welcome  the  church 
claiming  to  be  infallible,  and,  in  despair  of  at- 
taining to  the  light  of  spiritual  vision,  to  still  itself 
and  be  silent  in  the  darkness  of  implicit  faith. 

To  me  it  appears  that  there  is  a  mutual  re- 
lation between  this  doctrine  of  the  real  presence 
and  the  doctrine  of  the  infallibility  of  the  church 
of  a  most  instructive  and  warning  kind  ;  and 
that,,  while  the  belief  of  the  real  presence  invests 
the  church  which  inculcates  it  with  the  highest 
claim  on  the  homage  of  the  faithful  that  can  be 
conceived,  that  belief  could  never  have  been  off- 
ered to  men  but  by  a  church  claiming  to  be 
infallible,  or  be  received  but  in  the  faith  of  that 
infallibility. 

But  apart  from  the  testimony  of  observation 
or  history,  looking  at  the  subject  in  the  clear 
lieht  of  our  life  in  Christ  I  can  have  no  doubt 
as  to  the  true  character  of  that  against  which 
I  contend.     For  I  can  have  no  doubt  that  the 


AND  IN  THE  LIGHT  OF  ETERNAL  LIFE.     45 

attitude  of  the  human  spirit  in  cherishing  the 
faith  of  the  presence  of  Christ  in  the  bread  and 
wine,  and  in  assuming  that  partaking  of  them  is 
partaking  of  Christ,  is  not  any  form  of  obedience 
to  the  words — "Abide  in  me,  and  I  in  you.  As 
the  branch  cannot  bear  fruit  of  itself,  except  it 
abide  in  the  vine ;  no  more  can  ye,  except  ye  abide 
in  me  :  "  or  the  words — "  I  am  the  light  of  the 
world  :  he  that  followeth  me  shall  not  walk  in 
darkness,  but  shall  have  the  light  of  life  :"  or  the 
words — "  Receive  with  meekness  the  engrafted 
word,  which  is  able  to  save  your  souls  :  "  and, 
therefore,  neither  can  I  doubt  that,  not  being  any 
form  of  that  obedience  of  faith  which  is  thus 
called  for,  and  yet  making  the  high  and  solemn 
claim  which  it  does  make,  its  relation  to  that 
obedience  of  faith  is  that  of  a  rival  and  substitute. 
When  Luther,  at  one  stage  in  his  progress,  said, 
that  "if  the  Pope  would  permit  him  to  preach 
Justification  by  faith,  he  would  not  object  to  the 
Mass,"  he  understood  not  how  certainly  Justifi- 
cation by  faith  is  subversive  of  the  Mass,  and  of 
all  conceptions  of  the  Lord's  Supper  which  have 


-4-3  LIGHT  WHICH  JUSTIFIES 

a  common  root  with  the  Mass,  and  which  ask 
for  the  right  participation  in  that  ordinance  a 
faith  so  alien  to  that  which  receives  the  gospel 
of  the  grace  of  God.  Those  with  whom  Luther 
contended  had  an  instinctive  feeling — probably 
beyond  their  own  clear  intelligence  in  the  matter 
— of  the  danger  to  which  his  preaching  of  Justi- 
fication by  faith  exposed  the  whole  hold  of  their 
church  upon  the  minds  of  men,  and  especially 
that  which  they  felt,  and  justly,  to  be  its  strong- 
est hold  of  men — that  Mass  to  which  he  thus 
disclaimed  hostility.  The  fear  at  present  enter- 
tained, by  those  whose  confidence  is  Justification 
by  faith,  of  the  leaven  of  Romanism  working  in 
the  land  may  be  more  instinctive  than  intelli- 
gent ;  traditional  also  it  may  be — doubtless  is 
with  many  ;  while  in  many,  we  may  hope,  it  is 
the  discernment  that  this  is  another  gospel, 
which  yet  is  not  a  gospel.  But,  whether  more 
or  less  enlightened,  I  believe  that  the  fear  does 
not  in  degree  exceed  the  danger ;  nor,  however 
inoperative  and  so  far  innocuous  the  doctrine  of 
the  real  presence  may  have  been,   received  by 


PRESEXP  PEARS.  47 

tradition  and  held  among  the  mere  forms  of 
thought,  can  I,  when  it  is  seen,  as  now,  attract- 
ing awakened  minds,  and  sought  unto  for  com- 
fort and  hope  towards  God,  and  renewal  of 
strength  for  the  daily  conflict  of  life,  regard  it 
but  as  evil  beyond  the  worst  apprehensions 
which  it  has  awakened.  Christ  is  the  desire  of 
all  nations.  All  men  have  in  them  a  craving 
which  Christ  alone  can  truly  satisfy.  Yet,  alas  ! 
how  often  is  this  desire,  unenlightened,  unguided, 
just  that  which  moves  men  to  meet,  with  hasty 
and  unwarranted  response,  the  cry,  "  Lo !  here  is 
Christ,  lo !  there  is  Christ!"  The  warning  of 
our  Lord  in  regard  to  that  cry — "  Go  not  after 
them,  nor  follow  them,"  may  have  reference  to 
other  and  yet  future  forms  of  danger  to  His 
church ;  but  according  to  the  spirit  of  that  warn- 
ing do  I  believe  it  to  be,  to  treat  the  assump- 
tion of  the  actual  presence  of  Christ  in  the  bread 
and  wine  in  the  Lord's  Supper,  as  one  form  of 
that  danger. 

I  have  used  the  name,  "the  Mass,"  as  that 
given  to  the  Lord's  Supper  in   the   church  of 


4-8  OTHER  ELEMENT  OF  THE  MASS. 

Rome,  while  I  have  only  referred  to  part  of 
what  constitutes  the  Mass  of  Romanism,  and 
gives  its  high  place  to  that  service  in  the  worship 
of  Romanists.  For  the  Mass  consists  of  two 
parts :  that  receiving  and  feeding  upon  the  ma- 
terial substance  assumed  to  be  transubstantiated 
into  the  body  and  blood  of  the  Lord  which 
corresponds  to  what  Protestants  call  the  Com- 
munion ;  and  the  offering  up  to  God  in  worship, 
and  as  the  mean  of  procuring  the  highest  out- 
comings  of  divine  mercy,  that  same  material 
substance  as  to  which  this  faith  is  cherished, 
which  is  called  the  unbloody  sacrifice,  or  euchar- 
istic  offering  of  Christ.  And  this  other  part  of 
the  service  of  the  Mass  attracted  more  of  the 
attention  of  the  reformers  than  that  which  has 
now  been  considered  ;  for  it  took  to  their  minds 
the  form  of  a  renewal  of  sacrificial  offering  for 
sin,  to  the  depreciation  of  the  one  and  all-suffi- 
cient offering  of  Christ,  who,  once  in  the  end  of 
the  world,  hath  appeared  to  put  away  sin  by 
the  sacrifice  of  Himself. 

Now,  the  eucharistic  offering  appears  to  me  a 


A   SACRIFICIAL    OFFERING.  49 

natural  development  of  the  Lord's  Supper,  seen 
in  the  light  of  Transiibstantiation  ;  and  as  such  I 
would  now  notice  it,  because  the  appearance  of 
this  development  still  farther  illustrates  how  the 
faith  of  the  doctrine  of  the  real  presence  renders 
participation  in  the  ordinance  a  substitute  for, 
instead  of  a  witness  to  the  life  of  faith. 

That  which  was  believed  to  be  through  Tran- 
substantiation  the  body  and  blood  of  the  Lord, 
men  fed  upon  as  the  food  of  Eternal  Life.  It 
was  also  offered  to  God  as  the  highest  worship 
drawing  forth  the  highest  grace  (for,  doubtless, 
that  effect  on  the  condition  of  spirits  out  of  the 
body  which  they  contemplate  in  that  offering 
they  regarded  as  the  highest  form  of  answer  to 
prayer).  I  ask,  is  not  this  as  a  whole  consistent 
with  itself,  and  the  one  part  as  naturally  related 
to  the  faith  of  Transubstantiation  as  the  other  ? 
I  trust  the  reader  may  regard  the  whole  subject 
with  too  solemn  a  sense  of  its  importance  to  deal 
lightly  with  any  part  of  it  because  of  its  incon- 
gruity with  our  habits  of  thought.  If  Christ  is 
conceived  to  be  so  truly  present,  where  to  sense 


SO  THIS  PERFECTS  ITS  PARALLELISM 

is  but  a  material  substance,  that  He  may  therein 
be  fed  upon  by  the  human  spirit  ;  to  one  so 
conceiving,  what  coming  to  God  in  the  name 
of  Christ,  or  asking  mercies  for  Christ's  sake, 
or  presenting  of  Christ  to  the  Father  as  the 
ground  of  expectation  of  the  answer  of  prayer, 
can  be  more  fitting  than  that  of  the  eucharistic 
offering  ?  Feeding  upon  Christ,  and  worship- 
ping God  through  Christ,  are  so  related  that 
what  we  understand  to  be  the  first  of  these 
will  always  determine  our  conception  of  the 
other  also.  With  very  different  measures  of 
spiritual  apprehension  are  the  expressions — 
"  accepting  Christ  as  a  Saviour," — "  receiving 
him  as  the  bread  of  life,  which  hath  come 
down  from  heaven," — employed  by  Protestants  ; 
which  may  be  also  said  of  our  use  of  the  ex- 
pressions—  "praying  in  Christ's  name," — "trust- 
ing for  the  answer  of  our  prayers  to  Christ's 
merits,"  but  the  meaning  of  the  former  language, 
as  used  by  any  individual,  determines,  as  to  his 
use  of  it,  the  meaning  of  the  latter  also.  As 
these  two  several  attitudes  of  the  human  spirit 


WITH  THE  ELEMEXTS  OF  TRUTH 


are  related  to  each  other  in  the  experience  of 
Protestants,  so  to  Romanists  are  the  two  parts 
of  the  service  of  the  Mass  mutually  related. 
The  parallel  be'tween  what  we  know  in  ourselves 
and  what  we  see  in  the  Mass  will  be  more  and 
more  apparent  to  us  in  proportion  as  our  experi- 
ence of  Christianity  is  more  truly  the  fellowship 
of  the  life  of  Christ.  What  we  receive  from  God, 
in   Christ,   as   Eternal   Life,   is  what,   being  fed 

fe,  we 
Our  life   ascends  to 


•Iw«jMnirawa»i«»u»iiVsM4lKlBff 


upon,  and  so 

offer  to  God  in,  wotshirj 


God  in  worship.  And  it  is  its  being  the  Divine 
nature — its  being  the  Eternal  Life,  that  is  the 
secret  of  the  acceptableness  of  the  worship,  and 
of  the  sureness  of  the  response  to  it.  The  life 
which  we  are  living  is  lived,  so  to  speak,  in  our 
being  led  by  the  Spirit  of  God,  and,  therefore,  the 
worshipping  form  of  this  life  is,  worship  in  spirit 
and  in  truth.  We  are  born  of  the  will  of  God, 
and  we,  therefore,  ask  tilings  according  to  His 
will,  and  He  heareth  us.  Thus  is  it  the  mind  of 
Christ  which  we  present  to  the  Father.  Thus  is 
Christ,  who,  through  the  Eternal  Spirit,  offered 


52 


AXD   THE  DANGER  IT  INVOLVES. 


^ 


Himself  without  spot  to  God,  and  was  accepted 
asThe  one  and  sufficient  sacrifice  for  sin,  presented 
anew  in  all  prayers  of  Christians,  in  so  far  as 
these  are  a  participation  in  the  spirit  of  Christ — a 
form  of  the  life  of  Christ  in  them.  "  To  whom 
coming,  as  unto  a  living  stone,  disallowed  indeed 
of  men,  but  chosen  of  God,  and  precious  ;  ye 
also,  as  lively  stones,  are  built  up  a  spiritual 
house,  an  holy  priesthood,  to  offer  up  spiritual 
sacrifices,  acceptable  to  God  by  Jesus  Christ." 
Knowing  thus,  in  ourselves,  the  relation  which 
the  spiritual  reality  of  worship  bears  to  the 
spiritual  reality  of  feeding  upon  Christ,  we 
understand  how  the  belief  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
actual  presence  has  produced  the  Mass  of  Ro- 
manism in  both  its  parts,  and  see,  in  the  euchar- 
istic  offering,  the  substitute  for  that  worship 
which  is  in  spirit  and  in  truth,  as  we  saw  in  the 
other  part  of  the  service,  in  which  the  consecrated 
material  substance  is  partaken  of,  the  substitute 
for  receiving  with  meekness  the  engrafted  word 
which  is  able  to  save  the  soul. 

The  completeness  of  this  parallelism  greatly 


JUSTICE  TO  ROMANISM  AIMED  AT.  53 

tends  to  confirm  the  conviction  that  the  one  of 
these  objects  of  contemplation  is  the  counterpart 
of  the  other  ;  and  at  the  same  time  to  strengthen 
the  fear  that,  if  the  counterpart  once  begin  to 
awaken  an  interest,  and  to  be  felt  something  to 
the  mind  because  of  what  seeming  religious 
feeling  the  faith  of  it  sustains,  its  self-consistency 
and  harmonious  development  will  enable  it  to 
insinuate  itself  until  it  is  received  as  a  whole,  and 
takes  hold  of  the  mind  by  all  its  parts.  And  of 
the  likelihood  of  this  there  is  striking  evidence 
in  the  fact  that  forms  of 'thought  as  to  the  Lord's 
Supper,  one  in  nature  with  the  faith  of  the 
Church  of  Rome,  are  just  now  seen  developing 
themselves  into  forms  of  service  that  suggest  the 
Mass,  and  are  awakening  on  this  ground  the 
distrust  of  Protestants. 

I  have  endeavoured  to  do  all  the  justice  which 
one  not  holding  them  can,  to  the  views  to  which 
I  have  objected  ;  and  their  completeness  and 
self-consistency  in  that  system  in  which  they  are 
fully  developed   has  made  this  not  difficult  :  so 


54  WARNING   TO  PROTESTANTS 

that  I  hope  that  any  intelligent  Romanist  would 
have  no  hesitation  in  recognizing  the  fairness  of 
my  representation.  I  believe,  also,  that  those  in 
whom  that  tendency  to  Romanism  which  at 
present  awakens  so  much  attention  is  manifested 
will  recognize  themselves  in  what  I  have  intended 
as  the  statement  of  their  mental  position,  how- 
ever they  may  feel  confident  that  still  they  run 
no  risk  of  ending  in  Romanism,  or  however  they 
may  satisfy  themselves  with  the  line  of  separa- 
tion which  they  draw  between  themselves  and 
Romanists. 

But   the  root  of  that  which  has  been    fully 
■j—  ■ ■ ■ . 

developed  only  in  the  Mass  of  Romanism  is 
present  and  manifests  its  presence  in  Protestants 
much  more  widely  than  the  limits  of  this  move- 
ment. It  may  be  discerned  even  in  those  sects 
of  the  Protestant  Church  which  have  gone  furthest 
in  their  protest  against  the  Church  of  Rome. 
And  I  fear  I  dare  not  assume  that  all  those 
whose  case  this  may  be  will  easily  recognize  the 
application  of  what  I  have  said  to  themselves. 
On    the    contrary,    all    such    self-application    is 


HERE  SUGGESTED.  55 

likely  to  be  precluded  by  the  strong  recoil  from 
Romanism  to  which  they  are  conscious.  So 
long  as  the  Mass  offends  them  as  both  super- 
stitious and  idolatrous,  how  can  they  suspect 
that  the  elements  of  the  interest  which  the  Mass 
has  to  Romanists  are  present  in  the  interest  with 
which  they  themselves  regard  the  Lord's  Supper? 
So  small  is  the  likelihood  that  to  any  in  this 
mental  position  my  word  will  come  wTith  the 
arresting  personal  application,  "Thou  art  the 
man,"  that  I  had  almost  withheld  from  the 
attempt  so  to  press  it  home.  But  my  remem- 
brance of  a  comfort  not  in  Christ,  nor  in  the  true 
communion  of  His  body  and  blood  which  I 
have  witnessed  in  connection  with  the  ordinance 
of  the  Lord's  Supper,  where  there  has  not  been 
the  least  misgiving  as  to  the  truly  Protestant 
character  of  the  service,  is  too  painful,  and  my 
sense  of  the  danger  to  the  spirits  of  men  which 
it  involved  too  deep  to  permit  me  to  conclude 
without  making  some  effort  to  awaken  conscience 
in  this  solemn  matter. 

I  have  said,  "a  comfort  not  in  Christ,  nor  in  the 


5 6  PERVERTED  AND  DECEPTIVE  USE 


true  communion  of  His  body  and  blood."  I  use 
this  language  with  reference  to  a  comfort  experi- 
enced through  partaking  of  the  Lord's  Supper 
which  does  not  flow  from  the  exercise  of  faith  in 
Christ,  but  from  a  vague  persuasion  of  benefit 
derived  from  the  ordinance  itself  because  of  some 
assumed  virtue  in  it  to  promote  man's  peace 
with  God,  and  strengthen  the  soul's  hold  on 
Christ  ;  which  persuasion,  however  undefined  its 
grounds,  invests  the  ordinance  with  the  interest 
and  importance  of  a  medium  of  participation  in 
Christ  and  means  of  salvation,  and  clothes  the 
act  of  communion  with  a  character  of  peculiar 
solemnity  and  peculiar  acceptableness  to  God  as 
a  religious  service ;  so  that  the  Communion 
Table  is  left  with  a  sense  of  relief  to  the  con- 
science and  a  strengthened  hope  of  the  forgive- 
ness of  sms.  When  a  manner  of  comfort  the 
crude  elements  of  which  I  thus  endeavour  to 
indicate  is  derived  from  the  fact  of  participation 
in  the  ordinance  of  the  Lord's  Supper,  those  so 
comforted  being  persons  to  whom  the  true 
spiritual  apprehension  of  Christ  is  unknown,  it  is 


OF  THE  LORD'S  SUPPER.  57 

too  manifest  that  the  place  given  to  the  ordinance 
is  that  of  a  substitute,  for  the  actual  life  of  faith, 
and  not,  as  it  ought  to  be,  of  a  witness  to  that 
life  ;  for  partaking  in  it  is  not — does  not  profess 
to  be — a  testimony  as  to  what  Christ  is  proved 
to  be  from  day  to  day,  a  testimony  as  to  the 
secret  of  a  continuous  life  of  which  Christ  is  the 
food.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  clearly  had  recourse 
to  as  affording  some  vague  mystical  hope  of 
keeping  up  through  it  an  interest  in  Christ, — 
that  Christ  of  a  knowledge  of  whom  the  ordinary 
life  gives  no  token.  Surely  the  elements  of  the 
Mass  are  present  in  the  Lord's  Supper  so  used. 
And  that  it  is  widely  so  used  in  all  the  sects  of 
Protestants,  those  in  each  several  sect  who  know 
most  of  vital  Christianity  will  be  the  most  pre- 
pared to  admit. 

I  doubt  not  that  observant  intelligent  Roman- 
ists mark  the  same  fact.  To  them,  indeed,  that 
fact  will  appear  in  a  very  different  light  from 
that  in  which  it  appears  to  me.  They  will  re- 
gard it  as  indicating  how  Christians  in  all  sects 
of   Protestants   are,    though  they  know  it   not, 


1/ 


5^         INFERENCE   WHICH  THIS  SUGGESTS 

feeling  the  need  of  that  which  the  Church  of 
Rome  alone  has  to  give.  They  will  look  on 
these  elements  of  the  feelings  with  which  they 
themselves  regard  the  Mass  thus  appearing 
in  connection  with  a  form  of  doctrine  on  the 
subject  of  the  Lord's  Supper  the  most  opposite 
to  theirs,  as  proving  how  deep  in  humanity 
that  craving  is  which  thus  utters  its  voice 
in  spite  of  all  intellectual  protests  against  it 
in  creeds  and  catechisms.  And  from  a  con- 
siderable depth  in  man  it  surely  does  come. 
For  not  of  the  visible,  nor  of  man's  temporal 
interests,  nor  of  his  relation  to  the  creature  does 
that  voice  speak ;  but  of  the  invisible,  of  the 
eternal,  of  man's  relation  to  God.  Therefore  is 
a  certain  reverence  and  consideration  due  to  it. 
Yet,  assuredly,  that  voice  is  not  from  the  depths 
of  humanity — those  depths  of  which  the  Psalm- 
ist speaks,  "  Out  of  the  depths  have  I  cried  unto 
thee,  O  Lord."  That  which  utters  itself  thus 
widely,  and  not  unfrequently  with  much  earnest- 
ness and  solemnity,  still  is  not  the  experienced 
sense  of  the  deepest  ultimate  need  of  man.     It 


TO  ROMANISTS  CONSIDERED.  59 

pertains  not  to  that  depth  in  which  the  pure 
craving  for  Christ  arises — in  respect  of  which 
Christ  is  the  desire  of  all  nations.  It  asks, 
indeed,  for  a  hold  of  the  invisible  and  the  eter- 
nal ;  but  it  does  so  with  mere  fleshly  negative 
conceptions  of  these,  as  the  unknown  opposites 
of  seen  and  temporal ;  and  not  as  apprehending 
in  the  spiritual  the  essentially  invisible  and 
eternal.  Though  it  demands  a  religion  and 
solemn  transactions  with  God  it  can  be  con- 
tented with  assumed  transactions  with  an  un- 
known God.  It  offers  homage  to  the  Almighty 
and  Omniscient,  as  from  felt  weakness  and 
ignorance  ;  but  the  sense  of  weakness  and  ignor- 
ance confessed,  though  such  as  would  manifest 
itself  in  prostration  of  the  human  spirit  at  the 
presence  of  a  miracle  and  a  mystery,  is  not  what 
looks  for  light  to  the  fountain  of  light, — the 
"  soul  waiting  for  the  Lord  more  than  they  that 
watch  for  the  morning."  The  recognition  of  sin 
and  the  anxiety  for  an  interest  in  the  Atone- 
ment manifested  may  have  a  certain  measure  of 
truth    in   them  ;   but   they   amount   not  to  the 


60  FELT  NEED  OF  GOD  NOT  FAITH. 

spiritual  apprehension  of  the  awful  reality  of 
man's  alienation  from  God,  and  therefore  they 
permit  the  cherishing  of  a  peace  which  is  not 
true  peace — is  not  oneness  with  God — is  not  the 
experience  of  the  power  of  the  blood  of  Christ 
to  purge  the  conscience  from  dead  works  to 
serve  the  living  God.  Some  sense  of  the  un- 
sheltered feeling  of  an  intelligent  being,  realising 
that  there  is  a  Supreme  Ruler  of  the  universe 
and  yet  having  no  hold  of  His  favour,  that  voice 
utters,  and  with  some  welcome  for  any  guidance 
in  a  path  on  which  that  favour  may  be  assumed 
to  rest ;  but  that  voice  indicates  not  that  deeper 
sense  of  desolation  which  pertains  to  the  human 
spirit  yet  ignorant  of  God — the  sense  of  being 
an  orphan  while  God  is  not  known  as  a  Father, 
and  which  prepares  a  welcome  for  Him  who 
comes  to  reveal  the  Father.  Thus  coming  short 
in  all  respects  of  the  true  sense  of  that  need  of 
men  which  is  met  by  the  grace  of  God  in  the 
gift  of  Christ  this  craving  of  the  mind  has  no 
authority,  and  however  tenderly  it  may  be  right 
to  deal  with  it  as  it   may  be   connected  with 


OUR  MISUSE  OF  THE  LORD  JS  SUPPER      6 1 


some  measure  of  awakenedness  on  the  subject 
of  religion,  we  can  only  regard  its  clothing  the 
Lord's  Supper  among  Protestants  with  that 
practical  interest  which  attaches  to  the  Mass  of 
Romanism  as  one  among  the  many  instances  of 
its  influence  in  substituting  superstition  for  re- 
ligion ;  for  what,  in  truth,  is  this  craving,  but 
that  sense  of  the  necessity  for  a  religion  com- 
bined with  spiritual  ignorance  of  God  which  has 
made  man  so  universally  a  worshipping  being 
and  yet  left  him  not  a  worshipper  in  spirit  and 
in  truth  ? 

The  difficulty  I  have  felt  in  saying  what  the 
nature  of  the  comfort  is  which  is  found  in  the 
Lord's  Supper  when  that  comfort  is  derived 
simply  from  participation  in  the  ordinance  and 
not  from  the  direct  faith  of  Christ,  has  arisen 
from  this,  that  that  comfort  has  not,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  Romanist,  a  doctrinal  foundation, 
but  is  really  in  contradiction  to  the  doctrinal 
system  of  those  who  still  cherish  it.  And  this 
fact  presents  also  the  great  difficulty  in  en- 
deavouring to  carry  their  own  convictions  along 


62  IMPLIES  SELF-DECEPTION. 

with  me.  They  never  say  distinctly  to  them- 
selves why  or  how  they  expect  good  from  this 
ordinance,  and  therefore  though  another  may 
correctly  interpret  their  feelings  for  them  they 
will  be  slow  to  receive  an  interpretation  of  these 
feelings  which  contradicts  their  system.  Yet,  if 
any  thing  I  have  said  cause  any  to  stand  in 
doubt  of  themselves  in  this  matter,  let  me 
suggest  to  them  to  press  themselves  home  with 
such  questions  as  these  : — 

i.  Does  the  ordinance  of  the  Lord's  Supper, 
in  your  meditation  of  it,  speak  to  you  of  Christ  ? 
or  does  it  commend  itself?  Does  it  suggest  what 
altogether  apart  from  it  you  possess  in  Him  ?  or 
does  it  promise  as  to  what  of  Him  you  are  to 
receive  through  it  ?  Does  it  turn  your  thoughts 
to  Christ  as  the  true  interest  of  all  things,  the 
meat  which  endureth  unto  Eternal  life,  to  be  dis- 
cerned and  fed  upon  in  all  occupations  of  your 
being  ?  or  does  it  concentrate  your  interest  on 
itself  as  the  specially  appointed  medium  of  your 
participation  in  Him  ? 

2.  Is  the  act  of  participation  in  the  ordinance 


QUESTIONS  FOR  SELF-EXAMINATION.        63 

as  it  is  your  own  act  what  you  consciously  feel  to 
be,  and  would  have  others  to  recognize  as  being-, 
the  exponent  and  manifestation  of  your  ordinary 
manner  of  existence  as  a  Christian  man  ?  or  is  it 
an  act  which  has  as  its  object  to  make  good  for 
you  a  claim  to  be  a  Christian  man  ?  Is  it  in  har- 
mony with  the  words,  "  This  do  in  remembrance 
of  me,"—  "  Ye  do  show  the  Lord's  death  till  he 
come,"  a  testimony  concerning  Christ  which  your 
personal  knowledge  of  Him  qualifies  you  to 
give  ?  or  is  it  an  act  which  these  words  neither 
describe  nor  interpret,  not  being  of  the  nature 
of  a  testimony  at  all,  but  having  its  whole  import 
in  the  participation  in  Christ  assumed  to  be 
throug^.iJiatact  itself ? 

3.  Is  the  benefit  which  you  believe  yourself  to 
derive  from  this  ordinance  resolvable  into  a 
quickened  faith  in  Christ  as  your  life,  a  fuller 
purpose  of  heart  in  cleaving  to  the  Lord,  a  more 
vivid  realization  of  your  own  position,  as  one 
who  is  dead  and  his  life  is  hid  with  Christ  in 
God  ?  or  is  what  sense  of  benefit  you  cherish 
referable  to  your  persuasion  that,  in  some  way 


r 


64  RELATIOX  OF  IVORS  HIP 

which  you  understand  not,  you  have  by  the  act 
of  communion  strengthened  your  hold  of  Christ ; 
along  with,  it  may  be,  that  feeling  of  sacredness 
and  worship  which  associates  itself  with  all  ex- 
ercise of  awe  and  veneration  and  prostration  of 
the  spirit  before  God  even  though  the  unknown 
God? 

I  know  that  questions  such  as  these,  in  so  far 
as  they  suggest  the  desirable  answer,  are  apt  to 
be  leading  questions  to  all  self-justifying  spirits, 
but  this  risk  is  unavoidable,  and  they  may  be 
helpful  to  those  who  are  really  honest  with 
themselves. 

The  way  in  which  I  have  just  now  and 
throughout  spoken  of  awe  and  veneration,  and 
the  sense  of  mystery,  may  suggest  the  question, 
"  And  is  it  not  a  commendation  of  a  doctrine  or 
an  ordinance,  that  it  provides  exercise  for  awe 
and  veneration?  and  indeed  is  not  prostration  of 
our  reason  in  the  presence  of  Divine  mysteries 
an  element  in  all  worship  ?" 

I  have  heard  it  said,  that  "  worship  begins 
where  knowledge  ends."      I  cannot  receive  this 


TO  KNOWLEDGE.  65 

proposition :  yet  it  is  not  without  some  relation 
to  truth  ;  inasmuch  as,  though  worship  does  not 
begin  where  knowledge  ends,  it  still  does  not 
end  where  knowledge  ends,  but  always  goes  con- 
sciously  beyond  knowledge.  But,  if  it  be  indeed 
spiritual  worship,  it  is  to  be  described  no  less 
justly  as  worship  in  the  truth  than  as  worship  in 
the  spirit ;  nay,  because  it  is  in  the  spirit  there- 
fore it  is  in  the  truth  ;  for  it  is  in  giving  us  of  His 
Spirit  that  God  enables  us  to  worship  Him  in 
spirit  and  in  truth.  Not  by  darkness  but  by 
light  is  the  deepest  ano1  most  intimate  awe 
awakened  in  us.  That  we  may  be  such  wor- 
shippers as  the  Father  seeketh  we  are  brought 
out  of  darkness  into  God's  marvellous  light.  The 
spiritual  objects  visible  to  us  in  that  light  awe  us 
because  of  what  they  are  spiritually  seen  to  be. 
Nor  is  their  infinity  and  our  felt  inability  to 
comprehend  them  absolutely,  and  our  feeling 
that  on  all  hands  they  go  beyond  us,  an  experi- 
ence which,  properly  speaking,  demands  prostra- 
tion of  reason.     On  the  contrary,  this  experience 

is  that  of  the  highest  exercjae_of  reason — spirit- 
*  ■ — — Te 


I 


66    RELATION  OF  WORSHIP  TO  KNOWLEDGE. 

ually  enlightened  reason  sustaining  and  justify- 

f- 


ing  worship  ;  justifying  worship  because  of  what 
is  known  ;  justifying  it  beyond  what  is  known 
because  of  the  believed    expansion   of  what   is 


^"^"^b^y ~n.fi  Jggj-fYfi^^  God  is  light.  In 
His  light  He  gives  us  to  see  light,  and  to  the 
spiritual  eye  light  is  sweet ;  and  is  felt  to  be 
light,  though  in  its  infinite  intensity  it  be  light 
inaccessible.  God  is  love  :  and  he  that  dwelleth 
in  love  dwelleth  in  God  and  knoweth  God ; 
while  yet  it  is  said  of  the  love  of  God  that  it 
passeth  knowledge.  Nay,  as  to  the  divine  power 
put  forth  in  the  accomplishing  of  the  divine  will 
in  us,  that  mighty  working  whereby  it  is  said 
God  subdueth  all  things  unto  Himself,  the  apos- 
tle's trust  in  it  is  based  on  experimental  know- 
ledge ;  "  according,"  says  he,  "  to  the  power 
which  worketh  in  us  ;"  while  yet  his  expectation 
from  it  goes  beyond  knowledge  :  he  trusts  in 
God,  as  "able  to  do  exceeding  abundantly 
above  all  that  we  ask  or  think." 

Earnest  continued  meditation  on  what,  in  re- 
ference to  feeding  upon  Christ  as  the  bread  of 


A  WE  AND  EARNESTNESS.  6? 

life,  is  to  my  mind  a  rival  and  substitute,  may 
have  given  a  minuteness  beyond  what  will 
awaken  interest  to  my  perception  and  detail 
of  the  points  which  are  at  once  those  of  paral- 
lelism and  of  difference.  I  have  endeavoured 
to  include  the  full  circle  of  those  to  whom 
the  question  is  a  personal  one  by  dealing  with 
the  germ  and  root  of  the  evil,  and  not  merely 
with  its  developed  forms.  The  circle  thus  em- 
braced is  a  very  large  one,  though  the  extent 
of  injury  sustained  be  very  various  ;  the  error 
which  in  some  is  influential  enough  to  character- 
ize their  mental  position  being  present  in  others 
only  as  a  very  subordinate  though  still  hurtful 
element  in  their  religion. 

I  have  one  word  to  add  which  concerns  us  all. 
I  have  acknowledged  the  awe  and  veneration 
which  are  often  present  in  connection  with  the 
error  which  I  have  been  considering,  and  have 
endeavoured  to  indicate  how  it  may  be  so  ;  while 
I  have  vindicated  the  claim  of  spiritual  light  to 
be  the  proper  source  of  awe  to  the  human  spirit. 
But  why  are  awe  and  veneration — which  may  be 


68  WHY  ACCEPTED 


the  accompaniments  of  superstition — so  impos- 
ing? Why  are  seriousness,  self-restraint,  and  ab- 
sorption in  religion  so  easily  assumed  to  imply 
true  piety  ?  Doubtless  in  part  because  thought 
and  feeling  on  the  subject  of  religion  are  in  gene- 
ral so  superficial  that  most  men  when  they  see 
an  earnest  devout  man  see  one  who  has  gone 
further  in  the  direction  of  religion  than  them- 
selves. He  is  to  them  as  one  listening  to  a 
voice  which  they  are  disregarding,  but  to  which 
they  yet  feel  that  they  also  ought  to  give 
heed ;  a  voice  that  comes  from  a  greater  depth 
in  man  than  the  voices  which  they  are  allow- 
ing to  engross  their  attention  ;  and  they  may 
easily  fail  to  discern  that  it  is  not  a  voice  from 
the  real  ultimate  depths  of  man's  being.  But 
the  voice  that  comes  from  that  ultimate  depth 
is  also  in  men's  ears  as  well  as  that  other. 
Man  is  spoken  to  from  within  as  to  what  is 
religion  as  truly  and  as  universally  as  he  is 
as  to  the  necessity  for  a  religion.  In  truth, 
what  I  have  spoken  of  as  a  voice  from  a  less 
depth  is,  in  so  far  as  it  is  a  true  voice,  only  that 


AS  RELIGION. 


voice  from  the  ultimate  depth  imperfectly  heard. 
Therefore,  however  indiscriminating  may  be  the 
testimony  to  mere  seriousness  which  the  thought- 
less give,  we  might  expect  that  the  presence  of  a 
seriousness  which  arose  from  true  religion,  and 
was  obedience  to  the  voice  within  clearly  under- 
stood, would  lead  men  to  discriminate  in  this 
matter,  and  would  draw  from  them  the  acknow- 
ledgment that  this  and  not  that  was  what  they 
themselves  should  be,  though  they  are  not.  I 
believe  that  such  an  expectation  is  so  far 
warranted  that  at  least  it  would  make  a  con- 
siderable difference  ;  and  that  therefore  we  may 
say  that  the  fact  to  which  I  refer  is  also  in  part 
to  be  explained  by  this  other  fact  that  men  have 
so  little  help  of  living  epistles  of  the  grace  of 
God ;  the  number  of  such  being  comparatively 
so  small,  and  of  those  that  are,  the  light  so 
feeble. 

Let  us  then  seek  in  this  view  to  realize  our 
calling  and  our  shortcoming.  We  must  believe 
that  the  awe  and  veneration  experienced  in 
taking  into  a   man's  lips  a   material  substance 


70  THE  HIGHEST  A  WE  BELONGS 

which  he  regards  as  literally  or  mystically  the 
body  and  blood  of  the  Lord,  are  lean  and  barren 
emotions  compared  with  the  awe  and  veneration 
which  accompany  conscious  feeding  upon  the 
living  word — the  being  consciously  led  by  the 
Spirit  of  God.  The  apostle  regards  "  fear  and 
trembling"  as  the  emotions  which  naturally 
attend  the  faith  that  "God  is  working  in  us:" 
and  surely  nothing  can  be  conceived  more 
solemn  than  the  sense  of  being  in  the  hand  of 
God,  as  clay  in  the  hand  of  the  potter.  May  it 
not  suggest  what  we  would  imagine,  were  such 
a  thing  possible,  as  the  solemn  consciousness  of 
man  receiving  from  God  his  being  at  first,  and 
with  the  additional  solemnity  of  the  sense  of 
personal  responsibility  for  yielding  himself  to 
God.  Such  an  habitual  consciousness  as  that  of 
being  spiritually  new  made — "created  anew  in 
Christ  Jesus," — must  be  the  fountain  of  an 
habitual  awe  and  solemnity  to  which  the  partici- 
pation, from  time  to  time,  in  the  consecrated 
elements  can  bear  no  comparison  in  degree,  any 
more  than  in  kind.      And  certainly  the  mani- 


TO  THE  PUREST  LIGHT  7  l 

festation  of  these  feelings  should  come  to  others 
with  a  proportionally  greater  weight  of  authority, 
commanding  in  them  a  clearer  inward  testimony. 
Let  us  therefore  consider  what,  in  this  respect,  is 
due  from  us  to  our  fellow  men,  and  what 
manner  of  protection  from  error  in  this  great 
question  as  to  the  Bread  of  Life,  we  are  thus 
called  to  afford  to  them.  One  instance  of  the 
manifested  power  of  the  habitual  consciousness 
of  finding  Christ's  flesh  meat  indeed,  and  His 
blood  drink  indeed,  presented  within  the  circle 
of  those  with  whom  they  live,  is  of  inestimably 
higher  value  to  men  than  many  and  clear  argu- 
ments against  the  error  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
actual  presence,  and  all  modifications  of  it.  Let 
this  consideration  combine  with  all  else  that 
calls  upon  us  to  abide  in  Christ.  Let  us  seek  to 
abide  in  Him  that  men  may  see  in  us  what 
manner  of  awe  and  veneration  dwelling  in  the 
light  of  life  awakens.  Christians  are  children  of 
the  light  and  of  the  day.  Light,  therefore,  is  of 
their  birthright.  Let  our  claim  to  this  high 
birthright  be  made  practically.       Let  us  walk  in 


72  TO   WITNESS  THAT  THIS  IS  SO 

the  light,  and  let  men  learn  in  us  that  so  to  do 
r  is  not  to  lean  to  our  own  understanding,  or  to 
exalt  our  own  intelligence  ;  that,  on  the  contrary, 
this  is  the  true  prostration  of  the  human  spirit 
before  the  Father  of  spirits,  who  also  is  the 
Father  of  lights.  Let  the  form  of  our  claim  to 
implicit  faith  be  our  ready  reception  of  that 
word  the  entrance  of  which  giveth  light.  Let 
the  illustration  we  offer  of  the  humility  that 
receives  the  kindgom  of  heaven  as  a  little  child 
be,  not  rest  in  ignorance,  but  teachableness — 
"  the  opening  of  the  ear  as  the  learner,"  as  is 
prophetically  spoken  of  our  Lord. 

While  we  thus  propose  to  ourselves  to  vindi- 
cate against  all  that  would  usurp  its  place  the 
claims  of  the  engrafted  word  which  is  able  to 
save  our  souls,  simply  by  ourselves  receiving 
that  word  with  meekness,  trusting  to  the  assur- 
ance of  Christ — "He  that  abideth  in  me,  and  I 
in  him,  the  same  bringeth  forth  much  fruit," — 
let  us  be  prepared  to  meet  with  many  disap- 
pointments. In  the  measure  in  which  through 
abiding   in    Christ   we   bear   fruit   we   shall    be 


OUR  HIGH  CALL1XG.  73 

offering  to  men  help — important  help,  but  they 
will  not  necessarily  profit  by  it,  and  we  must  be 
contented  to  go  forward  through  ill  report  as 
steadily  as  through  good  report.  And  let  us 
remember  how  high  a  thing  we  are  attempting, 
not  only  in  order  that  even  a  little  success  may 
encourage  us  but  also  that  we  may  not  wonder 
that  it  is  comparatively  so  little.  The  question 
which  we  press  upon  men  is  not  that  between 
religion  and  no  religion  ;  it  is  the  closer  question 
between  true  religion  and  what  usurps  the  name. 
Now  I  believe  that  two  things  have  progressed 
together  in  this  country,  viz.  an  increased  realiza- 
tion of  the  importance  of  having  a  religion,  and 
an  increased  readiness  to  regard  all  earnest 
serious  religion  as  to  be  held  in  the  same  esti- 
mation. In  proportion  as  this  is  the  condition 
of  men's  minds,  being  helpful  to  them  in  the 
way  of  which  I  speak  will  be  difficult.  But  if 
indeed  we  be  on  God's  side  God  will  acknow- 
ledge us  :  it  is  not  for  us  to  seek  to  know  when, 
or  to  what  extent.  Let  us  cast  ourselves  into 
the  treasury  of  the  Lord.     The  offering  will  be 


74  JEWISH  AND  ROMANIST  UNDERSTANDING 

much  according  as  it  approaches  to  being  all  that 
we  have,  even  all  our  living.  Alas  !  our  offering 
being  thus  weighed  in  the  scales  of  the  sanctuary, 
will  not  our  continual  burden  be  that  it  is  not 
greater,  rather  than  that  our  God  does  not  use  it 
more  ?  Let  me  record  it  as  my  painful  humbling 
experience,  that,  in  now  dealing  with  error  I 
have  felt  myself  continually  obliged  to  take  it  to 
the  light  of  the  ideal  of  Christianity,  that  which 
shines  from  actual  Christianity  being  too  feeble 
for  my  need. 

SECOND, — Feeding  upon  Christ  considered  as 
expressing  the  part  of  Man's  Will  in  Faith. 

w  I  am,"  says  our  Lord,  "  the  living  bread 
which  came  down  from  heaven  :  if  any  man  eat 
of  this  bread,  he  shall  live  for  ever  :  and  the 
bread  that  I  will  give  is  my  flesh,  which  I  will 
give  for  the  life  of  the  world.  The  Jews,  there- 
fore, strove  among  themselves,  saying,  How  can 
this  man  give  us  his  flesh  to  eat  ?  "  "Anticipat- 
ing," says  the  Romanist,  "  the  unbelieving  Pro- 
testant."    Nay,  rather,  as  we  believe,  looking  at 


OF  S.  JOHN  VI.  51,  HOW  RELATED.  75 

the  subject  of  the  Lord's  discourse  with  that 
fleshly  mind  to  which  the  mind  that  applies  His 
words  to  the  ordinance  of  the  Lord's  Supper, 
and  finds  in  the  doctrine  of  Transubstantiation 
a  solution  of  their  difficulty,  is  most  akin.  It 
was  not  the  sin  of  the  Jews  that  understanding 
the  Lord's  words  they  would  not  believe  them  ; 
but  that,  murmuring  among  themselves,  and 
leaning  to  their  own  understanding  instead  of 
being  taught  of  God,  they  understood  them  not. 
In  assuming  that  what  the  Lord  called  upon  the 
Jews  to  believe  was  what  they  call  upon  Protes- 
tants to  believe,  Romanists  adopt  the  misunder- 
standing of  the  Jews,  and  identify  themselves 
with  their  carnal  apprehensions,  and  so  are  more 
truly  one  with  them,  notwithstanding  their  re- 
ceiving what  the  Jews  rejected,  than  we,  whose 
claim  to  be  found  in  the  exercise  of  faith  in  the 
Lord's  words  is  as  confident  as  that  of  the  Ro- 
manists ;  while  we  separate  ourselves  alike  from 
the  unbelief  of  the  Jews,  and  the  kind  of  faith 
exercised  by  the  Romanists,  by  accepting  our 
Lord's  words  in  their  spiritual  import,  and  re- 


7  6    FIG  URA  TI VE  I  'SE  OF  FO  0£>,   < '  FEEDING, " 

ceiving  their  mystery  as  a  spiritual  mystery,  to 
be  spiritually  discerned. 

I  will  now  assume  that  I  have  already  suffi- 
ciently vindicated  the  Protestant  interpretation 
of  the  language  of  our  Lord  as  to  eating  His 
flesh  and  drinking  His  blood  as  having  reference 
to  the  life  of  faith  ;  and  so  have  prepared  the 
way  for  considering  what  light  is  shed  upon  the 
secret  of  that  life  by  those  earnest  and  solemn 
expressions,  which,  while  they  awe  us  by  their 
aspect  of  mystery  and  difficulty,  still  make  an 
imperative  demand  on  us  to  seek  entrance  into 
their  light  For,  as  I  have  said,  the  conviction 
that  they  make  such  a  demand  is  inevitable  if 
we  reflect  upon  this,  that  they  make  a  require- 
ment which  must  be  understood  in  order  to  be 
complied  with,  and  compliance  with  which  in- 
volves no  less  momentous  an  issue  than  Eternal 
Life. 

We  are  familiar  with  the  transference  to  the 
department  of  mind  of  language  connected  with 
the  dependence  of  our  animal  life  on  meat  and 
drink.      We  speak  of  mental  food — we  speak 


IN  RELATION  TO  MIND.  77 

also  of  mental  poison.  We  speak  of  appetite — 
of  thirst,  with  reference  to  knowledge.  This  use 
of  words,  or  rather  that  reality  of  parallelism 
between  the  lower  and  higher  kinds  of  life  which 
belong  to  us  which  leads  to  this  use  of  words, 
may  help  us  here  ;  only  that  we  must  carefully 
distinguish  between  those  higher  experiences 
to  which  this  language  is  usually  applied,  and 
that  highest  human  consciousness  of  feeding  to 
which  our  Lord's  words  refer.  The  desire  to  be 
fed  with  food  convenient  for  us,  legitimate  as  to 
the  lowest  form  of  life  in  which  we  partake, 
rises  in  dignity,  doubtless,  as  it  is  cherished  with 
reference  to  intellectual  food  :  but  a  higher 
meaning  still  is  that  which  belongs  to  it  as  the 
desire  of  meat  enduring  unto  Eternal  Life — the 
hunger  which  welcomes  the  Bread  of  Life  which 
hath  come  down  from  heaven.  And  it  is  the 
more  necessary  to  insist  upon  this  distinction 
between  what  is  higher  in  this  matter  and  what 
is  highest,  that  Christianity  used  as  food  for  the 
intellect  only  is  so  often  assumed  to  be,  in  that 
use  of  it,  spiritual  food ;  and  that  thus  this  in- 


7  8  S.  JOHN  IV.  1  TO  34. 

tellectual  feeding  upon  it  comes  to  be  mistaken 
for  the  experience  of  eating  and  drinking  Christ's 
flesh  and  blood. 

I  desire  now  to  conjoin  the  4th  chapter  of  the 
Gospel  of  St.  John  (to  the  34th  verse)  with  the 
portion  of  the  6th  chapter  with  which  we  have 
been  occupied.  In  this  4th  chapter  the  spiritual 
and  the  natural  are  most  instructively  presented 
to  us,  in  their  distinctness  and  in  their  parallelism, 
in  the  thoughts  of  our  Lord,  contrasted  first 
with  those  of  the  woman  of  Samaria,  and  then 
with  those  of  the  disciples.  As  we  read  we  are, 
so  to  speak,  hearing  our  Lord  speaking  in  the 
higher  spiritual  light  in  which  man's  need  as  a 
spiritual  being  is  visible;  while  the  woman  of 
Samaria  and  the  disciples  are  heard  speaking  in 
the  lower  light  of  sight  and  sense.  His  asking 
drink  of  her,  a  woman  of  Samaria,  He  being  a 
Jew,  draws  out  on  her  part  a  reference  to  the 
unbrotherly  alienation  of  Jew  and  Samaritan  ; 
while  this  alienation  as  it  was  a  form  of  spiritual 
death  immediately  connects  itself  in  His  mind 
with  that  water  of  life  which-  is  love ;  her  need  of 


CONNECTED   WITH  79 

which  she  was  manifesting.  Himself  that  love 
and  the  imparter  of  it,  "  Jesus  answered  and  said 
unto  her,  If  thou  knewest  the  gift  of  God,  and 
who  it  is  that  saith  to  thee,  Give  me  to  drink  ; 
thou  wouldest  have  asked  of  him,  and  he  would 
have  given  thee  living  water."  Still  she  under- 
stands Him  not ;  nor  conceives  of  other  water 
than  that  which  the  well  at  which  they  were  met 
afforded.  Nor  while  He  goes  on  to  speak  in  the 
light  of  the  spirit  does  she  seem  at  all  raised  out 
of  sight  and  sense.  "Jesus  answered  and  said 
unto  her,  Whosoever  drinketh  of  this  water  shall 
thirst  again :  but  whosoever  drinketh  of  the 
water  that  I  shall  give  him  shall  never  thirst ; 
but  the  water  that  I  shall  give  him  shall  be  in 
him  a  well  of  water  springing  up  into  everlasting 
life.  The  woman  saith  unto  him,  Sir,  give  me 
this  water,  that  I  thirst  not,  neither  come  hither 
to  draw."  His  manifestation  of  supernatural 
knowledge  of  her  circumstances  commanding 
her  acknowledgement  of  Him  as  a  prophet,  with 
thoughts  pertaining  to  a  carnal  worship  she 
speaks  of  the  rival  claims  of  that  mountain  and 


8o 


S.  JOHN  VI.  27  TO  63. 


of  Jerusalem  to  be  the  place  where  men  ought 
to  worship.  His  reply,  while  claiming  for 
Jerusalem  the  place  which  God  had  given  to  it, 
deals  with  her  spiritual  nature, — "  Woman, 
believe  me,  the  hour  cometh,  when  ye  shall 
neither  in  this  mountain,  nor  yet  at  Jerusalem, 
worship  the  Father.  Ye  worship  ye  know  not 
what :  we  know  what  we  worship  :  for  salvation 
is  of  the  Jews.  But  the  hour  cometh,  and  now 
is,  when  the  true  worshippers  shall  worship  the 
Father  in  spirit  and  in  truth  :  for  the  Father 
seeketh  such  to  worship  him.  God  is  a  Spirit : 
and  they  that  worship  him  must  worship  him  in 
spirit  and  in  truth."  What  response  these  words 
had  within  her  we  know  not ;  for  there  is  no 
raising  of  her  up  into  the  spiritual  implied  in 
that  prostration  before  the  supernatural  which 
she  afterwards  expressed,  saying  to  her  towns- 
men, "  Come,  see  a  man,  which  told  me  all  things 
that  ever  I  did  :  is  not  this  the  Christ  ?" 

Again,  His  disciples,  returning  with  food,  ask 
Him  to  eat.  To  Him,  then  feeding  upon  the 
higher   food — that   of  the    Spirit,  the   proposal 


LIGHT  THUS  SHED  ON  THE  MYSTERY       8  I 

suggests  the  difference  and  superiority  of  that 
higher  food  rather  than  the  acceptableness  of  the 
material  food  offered  to  Him,  how  great  soever 
His  present  need  might  be.  He  said  unto  them, 
"  I  have  meat  to  eat  that  ye  know  not  of." 
Standing  without,  as  well  as  the  woman  of 
Samaria,  in  respect  of  the  light  in  which  He 
dwelt,  they  said  one  to  another,  "  Hath  any  man 
brought  him  ought  to  eat?"  "Jesus  saith  unto 
them,  My  meat  is  to  do  the  will  of  him  that  sent 
me,  and  to  finish  his  work."  Most  instructive  in 
this  record  is  the  tenderness  and  patience  of  true 
spiritual  light  towards  darkness  as  exhibited  in 
our  Lord's  dealing  with  the  woman  of  Samaria, 
and  with  the  disciples. 

But  I  wait  not  to  dwell  on  this.  What  do 
these  words  of  our  Lord,  speaking  in  the  light  of 
the  spirit,  teach  us  concerning  the  mystery  of 
spiritual  life? — for  to  that  mystery  they  mani- 
festly guide  our  thoughts.  What  help  do  they 
afford  to  us  seeking  to  know  what  it  is  to  eat 
the  flesh  of  the  Son  of  man,  and  drink  His 
blood  ?     Much  surely.     That  living  water  which, 


82  OF  SPIRITUAL  LIFE—HEB.    VII  16. 

if  she  had  known  the  gift  of  God,  He  said  to  the 
woman  of  Samaria  she  would  have  asked  of  Him 
and  He  would  have  given  to  her ;  that  water 
which  He  said  would  be  in  him  that  received  it 
a  well  of  water  springing  up  into  everlasting  life 
could  not  be  so  spoken  of  and  be  other  than  that 
of  which  He  spoke  in  saying,  "  Whoso  eateth  my 
flesh  and  drinketh  my  blood  hath  eternal  life." 
Neither  is  the  intimation  that  the  true  wor- 
shippers shall  worship  in  spirit  and  in  truth,  for 
that  the  Father  seeketh  such  to  worship  Him, 
without  help  to  us.  To  declare  the  worship 
which  was  to  be  was  to  declare  the  salvation 
that  was  given  ;  for  worship  in  spirit  and  in  truth 
can  only  be  rendered  by  those  to  whom  the  gift 
of  God  is  Eternal  Life. 

In  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  which  we  may 
regard  as  parallel  in  its  general  character  to  this 
conversation  of  our  Lord  with  the  woman  of 
Samaria,  inasmuch  as  in  both  the  transition  from 
the  one  dispensation  to  the  other  is  set  forth  in 
the  light  of  a  change  in  worship,  the  difference 
between  the  priesthood  of  our  Lord,  our  High 


THE  FATHER'S  WILL  CHRIST'S  MEAT.       83 

Priest,  and  that  priesthood  which  gave  place  to 
it  is  expressed  in  saying,  "  There  ariseth  another 
Priest,  who  is  made,  not  after  the  law  of  a  carnal 
commandment,  but  after  the  power  of  an  endless 
life!' 

But  the  most  direct  light  shed  by  our  Lord, 
upon  the  meaning  of  eating  His  flesh  and  drink- 
ing His  blood,  is  in  what  He  says  to  His  dis- 
ciples of  His  own  feeding  on  the  will  of  the 
Father — that  meat  which  He  had  to  eat  which 
they  knew  not  of.  It  was  their  interest  in  the 
secret  of  His  spiritual  life  which  caused  the  Lord 
thus  to  make  that  secret  known  to  them.  For 
their  sakes  He  spoke  it.  For  their  guidance  as 
the  Captain  of  their  salvation  does  He  say,  "  My 
meat  is  to  do  the  will  of  him  that  sent  me,  and 
to  finish  his  work."  Our  Lord's  uniform  intima- 
tion of  a  parallelism  between  His  own  relation 
to  the  Father  and  our  relation  to  Himself  would 
justify  our  receiving  these  words  as  light  on  the 
secret  of  our  own  spiritual  life,  considered  simply 
as  they  meet  us  here ;  but  they  immediately 
connect    themselves   with    His   words   on   that 


&4  THAT  WILL  IN  CHRIST 

occasion  on  which  He  spoke  directly  and  fully 
of  our  relation  to  Him  as  the  Bread  of  Life,  "As 
the  living  Father  hath  sent  me,  and  I  live  by 
the  Father,  so  he  that  eateth  me,  even  he  shall 
live  by  me."  Meditating  on  these  words  we  ask 
ourselves,  "  What  conception  can  we  form  of  our 
Lord's  living  by  the  Father?"  Yet,  unless 
there  be  some  aspect  of  that  relation  of  our 
Lord  to  the  Father  which  can  be  visible  to  us — 
unless  light  can  shine  for  us  on  His  living  by 
the  Father,  this  reference  to  it  can  afford  us  no 
practical  guidance.  Wonder  and  awe  and  in- 
tense interest  so  high  a  reference  must  awaken. 
But  unless  we  are  helped  to  the  understanding 
of  that  which  awakens  these  feelings  the  Lord's 
words  will  be  darkness  and  not  light  to  us  ;  and 
our  sense  of  the  high  nature  of  that  which  they 
intimate  will  only  increase  our  feeling  of  dark- 
ness. Therefore  we  welcome  the  light  shed  on 
our  Lord's  living  by  the  Father,  when  He  says, 
"  My  meat  is  to  do  the  will  of  him  that  sent  me, 
and  to  finish  his  work,"  and  we  feel  that,  in  con- 
nection with  these  words,  the  words — "As  the 


OUR  SPIRITUAL  FOOD.  85 

living  Father  hath  sent  me,  and  I  live  by  the 
Father,  so  he  that  eateth  me  even  he  shall  live 
by  me,"  are  light  to  us  and  guidance ;  and  we 
understand  that,  as  to  do  the  Father's  will  was 
the  Lord's  meat,  and  so  He  lived  by  the  Father, 
so  to  do  the  Lord's  will  must  be  our  meat  ;  and 
thus  shall  the  word  be  accomplished  in  us,  "As 
the  living  Father  hath  sent  me,  and  I  live  by 
the  Father,  so  he  that  eateth  me  even  he  shall 
live  by  me  ; "  even  as  He  says  in  another  place, 
"  If  ye  keep  my  commandments  ye  shall  abide 
in  my  love  ;  even  as  I  have  kept  my  Father's 
commandments  and  abide  in  his  love." 

While  the  reference  made  by  our  Lord  to  His 
own  living  by  the  Father,  illustrated  by  His 
saying  that  doing  the  Father's  will  was  His 
meat,  thus  sheds  light  on  our  living  by  Him  as 
the  Bread  of  Life,  it,  at  the  same  time,  indicates 
very  clearly  both  the  oneness  and  the  difference 
of  His  position  and  ours  ;  the  one  Eternal  Life 
being  in  Him  a  living_b)M:he  Father,  in  us  a 
living  by  Him.  We  must  seek  to  apprehend 
and  realise  both  this  oneness  and  this  difference 


86  ETERNAL  LIFE  ONE  IN  CHRIST 

— the  difference  of  our  Lord's  position  and  ours, 
that  we  may  know  our  dependence  on  Him  as 
to  salvation  ; — the  oneness,  that  we  may  con- 
ceive truly  of  the  nature  of  the  salvation  which 
we  receive  through  Him.  For  His  will,  on 
Avhich  we  are  to  feed,  and  His  commandments, 
which  we  are  to  keep,  are  none  else  than  what, 
as  the  Father's  will,  He  fed  upon,  as  the  Father's 
commandments,  He  kept. 

Let  us  combine  in  our  thoughts  on  this  sub- 
ject the  words,  "  My  meat  is  to  do  the  will  of 
Him  that  sent  me,"  with  the  words,  "  My  flesh 
is  meat  indeed,  and  my  blood  is  drink  indeed  ; " 
that  is  to  say,  let  us  connect  our  Lord's  con- 
sciousness that  doing  His  Father's  will  was 
Eternal  Life  with  His  testimony  to  us  that 
doing  His  will  is  Eternal  Life  to  us.  In  His 
personal  consciousness  that  the  will  of  God  ful- 
filled in  humanity  is  Eternal  Life  for  humanity, 
does  the  Lord  testify  to  men  that  that  is 
Eternal  Life  which,  in  giving  Him,  the  Father 
has  given  to  them.  How  does  this  conscious- 
ness utter  itself  in  the  urgency  and  reiteration 


AND  IN  US—S.  MATT.  XL  27  TO  30.  87 

of  the  testimony  ?  It  is  like  (because  there  also 
the  same  personal  consciousness  utters  itself,) 
"  Come  unto  me,  all  ye  that  labour  and  are 
heavy  laden,  and  I  will  give  you  rest.  Take  my 
yoke  upon  you,  and  learn  of  me  ;  for  I  am  meek 
and  lowly  in  heart :  and  ye  shall  find  rest  unto 
your  souls.  For  my  yoke  is  easy,  and  my 
burden  is  light."  This  speaking  out  of  His 
own  experience  —  the  good  treasure  of  His 
own  heart — it  is  that  gives  to  our  Lord's 
words  their  peculiar  power  to  come  home 
to  our  hearts;  and  we  hear  with  all  the  more 
gladness  and  free  welcome  the  voice  of  the 
Eternal  Wisdom  because  uttering  itself  within 
humanity — the  voice  of  humanity.  Our  Lord 
not  only  speaks  with  divine  authority  :  He 
speaks,  so  to  express  myself,  with  human 
authority  also.  His  humanity  pronounces  to 
our  humanity  as  the  fixed  and  certain  law  of  the 
wellbeing  of  all  humanity  that  which  it  is  itself 
through  its  connection  with  His  Divinity.  The 
comfort  to  us  of  faith  in  our  Lord's  humanity 
depends  on  our  faith  in  His  Divinity ;   for  the 


88  THIS  UNITY  IS  KNOWN 

interest  to  us  of  the  Eternal  Life  seen  in  His  hu- 
manity depends  on  His  power  to  impart  it  to  us 
— to  sustain  it  in  us.  But  we  cannot  draw  too 
near  to  the  Eternal  Life  as  it  is  in  Him  in  seek- 
ing to  understand  what  it  is  to  be  in  ourselves  ; 
neither  can  we  study  too  closely  all  that  is  made 
visible  to  us  of  His  living  by  the  Father  in  order 
to  understand  how  we  are  to  live  by  Him. 

In  proportion  as  we  realize  the  oneness  of  the 
food  on  which  our  Lord  fed,  and  on  which  we 
feed,  that  food  being  the  one  Eternal  Life,  to 
Him  the  Father's  will,  to  us  the  Father's  will 
fulfilled  in  Him,  and  so  His  will,  we  are  prepared 
to  recognize  the  oneness  of  the  process  of  feed- 
ing, in  His  case  doing  the  Father's  will,  in  our 
case  doing  His  will ;  and  my  desire  is  that  you 
should  thus  see  the  relation  of  the  will  to  the 
life  of  faith,  to  eating  the  flesh  of  the  Son  of 
man,  and  drinking  His  blood,  in  the  clear  light 
of  Eternal  Life.  For,  however  clear  the  light 
seems  to  be  which  is  shed  upon  our  Lord's 
living  by  the  Father,  and  consequently  on  our 
living  by  Him,   by  the  words,  "  My  meat  is  to 


IN  THE  LIGHT  OF  ETERNAL  LIFE.  89 

do  the  will  of  him  that  sent  me,"  I  would  not 
feel  justified  in  representing  the  obedience  of  the 
will,  the  calling  Jesus  Lord  in  the  Spirit,  as  the 
essence  of  the  act  of  feeding  upon  Christ,  were 
this  conception  a  mere  inference  from  two  texts 
of  Scripture  thus  seemingly  related.  Indeed, 
though  these  verses  placed  together  as  I  have 
now  placed  them  are  peculiary  explicit  on  this 
subject,  the  passages  of  a  similar  import  are 
many.  But  I  am  not  contented  that  it  should 
stand  simply  as  what  the  intellect  concludes  as 
to  the  meaning  of  even  many  passages.  I 
desire,  as  I  have  said,  that  you  should,  in  the 
light  of  the  Eternal  Life  given  to  us  in  Christ, 
see  that  the  oneness  of  the  Eternal  Life  in  Him 
and  in  us,  implies  that,  as  doing  the  will  of  the 
Father  was  His  meat,  doing  His  will  is  our 
meat ;  and  that  it  is  thus  that  we  live  by  Him 
as  He  lived  by  the  Father. 

The  oneness  of  the  Eternal  Life  in  our  Lord 
and  in  us  to  whom  He  imparts  that  life  implies 
this.  The  nature  of  a  salvation  which  is  a  life 
implies  it  also.     For  it  appears  to  me  a  statement 


9°  BY  MOVEMENTS  OF  THE   WILL 

that  has  its  light  in  itself,  that,  as  spiritual  beings, 
it  is  by  movements  of  the  will  that  we  appropriate 
spiritual  food.  Such  movements  are  acts  of 
spiritual  eating  and  drinking,  issuing  in  the 
consubstantiating  of  our  spirits  with  that  which 
being  received  into  the  will  is  received  into  us, 
into  what  is,  in  the  most  intimate  sense,  our 
proper  selves,  so  affecting  what  we  are.  For 
as  is  our  will  such  are  we.  It  is  of  the  will 
of  God  that  we  are  born  again :  our  being 
born  again  is  the  formation  in  us  of  a  will  one 
with  the  will  of  God.  By  the  will  we  feed 
on  spiritual  food  ;  so  that  whatever  is  presented 
to  us  as  spiritual  food  remains  outside  of  us — is 
not  yet  fed  upon — so  long  as  the  will  shuts  it 
out.  By  the  will  we  feed  upon  that  which  is 
death  and  not  life  to  our  spirits — feeding  upon 
ashes,  a  deceived  heart  leading  us  astray.  By 
the  will  we  feed  on  the  Bread  of  Life  which  hath 
come  down  from  heaven,  being  taught  of  the 
Father  and  so  drawn  to  the  Son.  Speaking  less 
strictly,  meditation  on  Christ,  occupation  of 
heart  and  mind  with  His  love — with  His  work 


IS  SPIRITUAL  FOOD  APPROPRIATED.         9 1 

and  its  results,  may  be  thought  of  as  feeding 
upon  Christ ;  but  this  they  are  not  in  themselves. 
This  they  imply  only  in  so  far  as  they  are  issuing 
in  that  calling  Jesus  Lord  in  the  spirit  which  is 
the  result  contemplated  in  the  divine  purpose, 
and  is  an  event  in  the  will. 

To  understand  the  place  which  the  will  has  in 
our  feeding  on  the  Bread  of  Life  which  hath  come 
down  from  heaven  is  to  understand  the  counsel, 
"  Keep  thine  heart  with  all  diligence  ;  for  out  of 
it  are  the  issues  of  life :"  for  to  keep  the  heart 
aright  is  to  reserve  the  obedience  of  the  will  for 
that  living  word  which  is  the  utterance  of  the 
will  of  Christ  within  us.  Such  yielding  up  of 
the  will  to  Christ,  and  calling  Him  Lord,  is  that 
result  of  the  true  knowledge  of  Himself  of  which 
our  Lord  spoke  to  the  woman  of  Samaria.  "  If 
thou  knewest  the  gift  of  God,  and  who  it  is  that 
saith  to  thee,  Give  me  to  drink ;  thou  wouldest 
have  asked  of  Him,  and  He  would  have  given 
thee  living  water :"  and  the  result  is  the  fulfil- 
ment in  us  of  what  He  added,  "Whosoever 
drinketh  of  the  water  that  I  shall  give  him  shall 

1/ 


9 2  CHRIST  THE  TRUE   VEYE. 

never  thirst;  but  the  water  that  I  shall  give  him 
shall  be  in  him  a  well  of  water  springing  up  into 
everlasting  life :"  and  this  springing  up  into 
everlasting  life  of  the  living  water  is,  in  reference 
to  our  relation  to  God,  that  worship  of  the 
Father  in  spirit  and  in  truth  of  which  the  Lord 
also  spoke  to  her ;  for  it  is  the  life  of  the  Son  in 
us  that  ascends  to  the  Father  in  such  worship. 

I  cannot  wait  to  consider  the  many  passages 
that  naturally  come  to  our  recollection  and 
connect  themselves  with  the  understanding  at 
which  we  have  arrived  as  to  the  meaning  of 
feeding  upon  Christ,  viz.,  that  it  is  receiving  His 
will  to  be  our  will,  so  receiving  His  life  to  be 
our  life ;  passages  which  at  once  illustrate  this 
conception  and  are  illustrated  by  it.  The  rela- 
tion Of  the  branches  to  the  vine,  the  force  of  the 
charge,  "  Abide  in  me,"  the  result  of  so  abiding 
in  the  flowing  in  of  the  life  that  is  in  the  vine 
into  the  branch :  all  this  is  recalled  and  illus- 
trated ;  and  we  are  taught  to  cherish  the  living 
consciousness  of  the  meeting-place  and  junction 
of  the  branch  with  the  vine,  and  of  the  pressure 


CHRIST  THE  LIGHT  OF  THE   WORLD.         93 

of  the  sap  of  the  vine  seeking  entrance  into  the 
branch,  and  of  the  freedom  of  the  human  will  in 
that  we  may  welcome  that  living  sap,  or  shut  it 
out,  and  of  our  dependence  on  the  teaching  of 
the  Father  that  we  may  exercise  that  freedom 
aright — our  dependence  on  the  guidance  of  the 
voice  which  says,  "  This  is  my  beloved  Son  : 
hear  him,"  that  we  may  hear  Him  and  live. 
These  words  of  the  Lord  also  are  recalled  to  us, 
"  I  am  the  light  of  the  world  :  he  that  followeth 
me  shall  not  walk  in  darkness,  but  shall  have  the 
light  of  life."  And  the  nature  of  light  as  afford- 
ing guidance,  revealing  a  path  to  walk  in  ;  and 
the  nature  of  obedience  to  light,  as  walking  in 
the  path  revealed ;  and  the  nature  of  the  relation 
to  Him  that  speaks  into  which  we  are  invited  as 
following  Him  in  a  path  in  which  He  is  walking  ; 
all  this  connects  itself  with  what  we  have  been 
seeing  to  be  the  essence  of  receiving  as  a  Saviour 
Him  who,  "  being  made_perfect,  became  the 
author  of  eternal  salvation  unto  all  them  that 
obey  him." 


94  CHRISTIAN  EXPERIENCE. 

If,  in  seeking  light  on  the  subject  of  feeding 
upon  Christ,  we  study  the  records  of  the  hidden 
life  of  Christian  men  which  the  journals  which 
they  have  so  often  kept  present  to  us,  and 
which  are  doubtless  a  part  of  the  riches  of  the 
Church,  we  shall  have  our  attention  engaged 
with  much  that  does  not  seem  to  pertain  to 
the  region  of  the  will  at  all ;  and  more  especially 
when  need  of  Christ,  and  appropriation  of 
Christ,  and  comfort  and  peace  experienced 
through  such  appropriation  are  spoken  of,  the 
language  employed  is  altogether  unrelated  to 
the  will.  We  meet  confession  of  sin — rejection 
of  trust  in  self — realization  of  the  freeness  of 
divine  grace.  We  meet  acceptance  of  the  free 
grace  realized  and  complacency  in  the  way  of 
salvation.  Such  responses  to  the  free  grace  of 
God  we  meet ;  but  nothing  that  places  before 
us  such  actings  of  the  human  will  as  I  have 
now  spoken  of,  and  for  which  I  have  claimed 
that  they  and  they  alone  are,  strictly  speaking, 
acts  of  feeding  upon  Christ,  acts  of  living  by 
Him  as  He  by  the  Father.     We  meet  nothing 


DIFFICUL  TIES  SUGGESTED.  9 5 

that   indicates  discernment  of  a  will  of  God  for 
man  revealed  in  Christ — a  human  will  one  with 
the  divine  will — along  with  the  expression  of  an 
apprehension  of  this  will  as  "the  bread  of  life 
which  hath  come  down  from  heaven,  of  which 
if  a  man  eat  he  shall  never  die."     We  meet  no 
record  of  acts  of  feeding  upon  this  will  by  re- 
sponding to  it,  accompanied  by  the  consciousness 
that  such  calling  of  Jesus  Lord  is  the  true  expe- 
rience of  feeding  upon  Him.     We  meet  no  re- 
cord of  experience  that  expresses  itself  by  using 
language  in  reference  to  the  Lord's  will  such  as 
He  uses  as  to  the  Father's  will  when  He  says, 
"  My  meat  is  to  do  the  will  of  him  that  sent 
me,"  or  that  suggests,  as  being  a  living  illus- 
tration of  its  reality,  that  connection  on  which 
I  have  dwelt  so  much  of  these  words  with  the 
words,  "  As  the  living  Father  hath  sent  me,  and 
I   live   by   the   Father,   so   he  that  eateth  me, 
even  he  shall  live   by   me."      Such    record    of 
eating  the  flesh  of  the  Son  of  Man,  and  drink- 
ing  His   blood,   we   meet   not :   and    yet   such 
feeding  upon  Christ  there  must  have  been,  if 


96  HOW  TO  BE  REGARDED. 

indeed  we  are  reading  of  branches  abiding  in 
Christ  the  vine,  and  living  by  His  life ;  of  men 
of  whom  it  was  true  that,  in  living  the  lives 
recorded,  they  lived,  yet  not  they,  but  Christ 
in  them  ;  of  men  whom  the  law  of  the  spirit 
of  the  life  that  is  in  Christ  was  making  free 
from  the  law  of  sin  and  death.  If  of  such  men 
we  are  reading,  the  acts  of  will  which  I  have 
recognized  as  acts  of  feeding  upon  Christ  must, 
however  unexpressed,  still  have  been  present 
underlying  all  that  is  expressed, — the  fruit  and 
result  of  all  that  occupation  of  thought  and 
heart  with  the  grace  of  God,  which  is  ex- 
pressed : — I  would  venture  to  add,  the  real 
ultimate  ground  and  reason  of  all  the  peace 
and  confidence  before  God  which  we  see  cher- 
ished, being  that  in  the  human  spirits  before  us 
to  which  the  Divine  Spirit  has  borne  testimony ; 
for,  in  so  far  as  the  Divine  Spirit  bore  testimony 
to  their  spirits  that  they  were  the  children  of 
God,  it  must  have  been  because — "  as  many  as 
are  led  by  the  spirit  of  God  they  are  the  sons 
of  God." 


FAITH  ABSORBED  IN  ITS  OBJECT.  97 


How  has  it  come  to  pass  that  men  spiritually- 
alive  should  record  so  much  concerning  their 
inward  life,  and  not  have  led  us  to  this  inmost 
ultimate  point  of  the  contact  of  their  will  with 
the  will  of  Christ  in  submission  to  it,  as  the 
secret  of  that  life  ?  The  explanation  is  partly 
in  the  history  itself  of  this  bending  of  the  will, 
viz. :  that  it  is  the  effect  of  a  spiritual  appre- 
hension of  Christ  which  naturally  occupies  more 
attention  than  this  its  effect  ;  so  that  the  man 
who,  through  beholding  as  in  a  glass  the  glory 
of  the  Lord,  is  changed  into  the  same  image, 
is  more  occupied  with  the  glory  which  he  is 
beholding  than  with  the  change  in  himself 
which  it  is  making ;  and  yet  would  that  glory 
give  him  no  peace  but  in  working  that  change. 
Let  him  but  be  disobedient  to  the  heavenly 
vision,  and  his  peace  will  forthwith  depart. 
This  is  partly  the  explanation.  But,  doubtless, 
the  explanation  is  chiefly  to  be  found  in  the 
case  of  the  Christians  with  whose  diaries  we 
are  most  familiar  in  this  country,  and  to  these  I 
specially  refer,  in  the  fact  of  a  departure  from 

G 


YET  FURTHER  EXPLANATION 


the  simplicity  that  is  in  Christ  in  their  concep- 
tions of  justification  by  faith  and  of  the  way  in 
which  faith  excludes  boasting.  That  in  so 
many  instances  the  form  of  thought  and  lan- 
guage alone  should  bear  the  impress  of  such 
error,  while  the  condition  of  the  heart  and 
spirit  is  manifestly  in  harmony  with  the  counsel 
of  God  in  Christ,  is  a  seeming  contradiction, 
for  which  we  must  be  thankful.  These  are 
instances  in  which  true  elements  of  thought  on 
the  subject  of  salvation  have  neutralized  error; 
in  which  also,  doubtless,  the  spiritual  quickening 
of  conscience  has  protected  from  danger  beyond 
the  discernment  of  the  intellect,  and  saved  true 
and  earnest  spirits  seeking  peace  with  the 
Father  of  spirits  and  harmony — peace  and 
harmony  to  be  found  only  in  consistency  with 
the  laws  of  His  spiritual  kingdom.  "  Can  two 
walk  together,  except  they  be  agreed?"  "What 
communion  hath  light  with  darkness?"  "If  I 
regard  iniquity  in  my  heart  the  Lord  will  not 
hear  me."  "  If  our  heart  condemn  us,  God  is 
greater  than  our  heart,  and  knoweth  all  things. 


u 


CALLED  FOR.  99 


Beloved,  if  our  heart  condemn  us  not,  then  have 
we  confidence  toward  God."  "  Herein  is  our 
love  made  perfect,  that  we  may  have  boldness 
in  the  day  of  judgment,  because  as  he  is  so  are 
we  in  this  world."  True  peace  can  only  have 
been  attained  in  harmony  with  these  laws  of 
the  kingdom  of  God,  whether  the  language  of 
those  who  seem  partakers  in  such  peace  make 
direct  reference  to  them,  or  do  not. 

But  what  are  these  quotations  from  the  sacred 
volume  but  records  of  the  original  Christian 
experience,  that  of  those  who  first  trusted  in 
Christ  ?  And  what  are  Ave  taught  by  this  direct 
reference  by  the  early  Christians  to  their  par- 
ticipation in  the  life  of  Christ  and  oneness  of 
will  with  God  in  Him,  in  speaking  of  their 
peace  toward  God,  while  we  are  not  accustomed 
to  it  among  ourselves  ?  Why,  among  us,  are 
we  left  to  infer  such  participation  and  one- 
ness as  the  ultimate  essence  of  the  confidence 
cherished  ;  and  to  do  so,  I  may  say,  in  opposi- 
tion to  the  literal  import  of  the  language  used  ? 
I  have  suggested  as  one  reason  of  that  absence 


IOO  A  DEPARTURE  FROM  THE 

of  recognition  of  the  state  of  the  individual's 
own  will,  as  connected  with  confidence  toward 
God,  which  we  meet  with  in  the  Christian  diar- 
ies with  which  we  are  most  familiar,  that  the 
Christian  is  more  occupied  with  the  apprehen- 
sion of  Christ  which  affects  his  will,  than  with 
the  consciousness  that  his  will  is  affected.  But, 
doubtless,  this  reason  existed  at  the  first  as 
well  as  now  ;  and  yet  the  Apostle,  as  the  most 
natural  utterance  of  his  experience,  speaks  of 
both  together,  "We  all,  with  open  face  be- 
holding as  in  a  glass  the  glory  of  the  Lord, 
are  changed  into  the  same  image,  from  glory 
to  glory,  even  as  by  the  spirit  of  the  Lord." 
Therefore  the  other  reason  which  I  suggested, 
viz. :  a  departure  from  the  simplicity  that  is 
in  Christ  in  the  conceptions  entertained  of 
justification  by  faith,  and  of  the  way  in  which 
faith  excludes  boasting,  demands  the  more 
attention.  We  cannot  treat  as  of  small  ac- 
count any  difference  of  apprehension  in  such 
a  matter  between  ourselves  and  the  Apostle 
and  those  who  saw  in  the  same  light  with  him 


SIMPLICITY  THAT  IS  IN  CHRIST.  10 1 

of  such  magnitude  as  to  impress  itself  on  the 
language  of  Christian  men  speaking  of  their 
inner  life,  and  of  their  peace  toward  God 
through  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ ;  nor  can  we  feel 
that  we  have  full  communion  with  these  first 
Christians,  until  we  find  their  language  the 
natural  expression  of  our  experiences.  In  truth, 
although  we  believe  that  many  have  really 
found  life  in  feeding  upon  the  will  of  Christ, 
while  expressing  their  hope  toward  God  in 
language  that  would,  strictly  interpreted,  imply 
that  to  them  feeding  upon  Christ  consisted  in 
the  acknowledgment  of  Christ's  work  for  them, 
and  not  in  thus  receiving  His  life  to  be  their  life, 
it  is  impossible  not  to  fear  that  many  more, 
not  protected  by  an  awakened  conscience  and 
quickened  spiritual  apprehension,  have  come 
short  of  the  salvation  that  is  in  Christ  through 
placing  such  mental  reference  to  the  work  of 
Christ  in  the  place  of  that  obedience  of  the  will 
in  accomplishing  which  the  knowledge  of  Him 
and  of  His  work  saves.  The  day  of  the  Lord 
will    make   manifest   to   what   extent   the   true 


1 02    JUSTIFICA  T10N  AND  SANCTIFICA  TION 

feeding  upon  Christ  has  thus  been  hindered. 
What  I  recognize  in  the  record  of  primitive 
Christianity — what  I  desire  to  see,  but  do  not 
see,  even  in  some  of  the  most  unequivocal 
records  of  living  Christianity  with  us,  is  the 
acknowledgment  of  the  directness  of  the  demand 
which  the  gospel  makes  on  the  will. 

I  say,  the  acknowledgment  of  the  directness 
of  the  demand  which  the  gospel  makes  on  the 
will.  For  an  indirect  effect  upon  the  will  is 
admitted,  is  indeed  contended  for.  "  The  faith," 
it  is  said,  "which  saves,  also  sanctifies.  It 
produces  not  only  peace  and  confidence  towards 
God  but  also  holiness.  Not  merely  is  the 
work  of  Christ  trusted  in  :  His  example  is  also 
followed.  Not  only  is  forgiveness  of  sin  received 
through  His  blood,  but  deliverance  from  the 
power  of  sin  by  the  Spirit  is  also  God's  gift  to 
us  in  Him;  and  we  have  no  right  to  regard  our 
faith  as  a  saving  faith  unless  its  soundness  be 
proved  by  the  fruit  which  it  bears."  Nor  am  I 
insensible  to  much  good  that  has  resulted  from 
this  manner  of  teaching,  much  gain  to  the  cause 


UND UL  Y  SEPARA  TED.  1 03 

of  righteousness  ;  gain,  I  mean,  in  comparison 
with  what  would  have  been  the  result  if  the 
first  half  in  all  this  had  been  insisted  upon 
without  the  second  ;  if  what  has  been  called 
Justification  had  been  insisted  on  without  what 
has  been  called  Sanctihcation.  The  addition 
has  been  a  concession  to  the  demand  of  con- 
science ;  and  has  of  course  been  valuable  in 
proportion  as  it  has  been  interpreted  by  an 
enlightened  and  quickened  conscience.  But 
still  the  evil  has  been  great.  Two  things  have 
been  spoken  of  where  there  is  but  one  thing, 
laborious  efforts  at  harmony  made  where  iden- 
tity should  be  recognised  ;  and  a  complexity 
embarrassing  to  the  spirit  has  been  introduced 
instead  of  the  simplicity  that  is  in  Christ. 

This  is  the  testimony  of  God  concerning  His 
Son,  "  that  God  hath  given  to  us  eternal  life, 
and  this  life  is  in  his  Son."  To  receive  this 
testimony  and  be  taught  of  God  is  spiritually  to 
apprehend  Eternal  Life  as  manifested  in  the 
Son  of  God,  and  given  to  us  in  Him.  The 
practical  demand  which  in  this  light  is  felt  to 


104  THEIR   UNITY  SEEN  IN  THE 

press  upon  us  is  that  we  welcome  this  life  to  be 
our  life  ;  the  trust  in  Christ  called  for  is  that  we 
feed  on  Him  as  the  bread  of  life ;  for  trust  in 
food  is  to  use  it  as  food,  expecting  to  be  nour- 
ished by  it.  Spiritual,  doubtless,  and  as  spirit- 
ual to  be  only  spiritually  discerned,  is  this  way 
of  salvation  ;  but  exceedingly  simple  in  the  con- 
ception of  it.  The  Eternal  Life  lived  by  our 
Lord  as  the  Son  of  Man  is  apprehended  as  the 
gift  of  God  to  man — to  us, — therefore  our  proper 
life  given  to  us  that  we  may  live  it.  We  see  it 
divine,  but  we  see  it  human  also,  the  life  of 
Christ.  We  accept  the  free  gift  of  God,  and 
yield  up  our  will  to  the  will  of  Christ,  our  spirit 
to  His  spirit  ;  and  the  end  of  our  God  is  accom- 
plished. We  live :  we  live  the  Eternal  Life. 
"  He  that  believeth  on  the  Son  of  God  hath  the 
witness,  or  record,  in  himself."  We  are  become 
living  epistles  of  the  grace  of  God.  It  is  now 
recorded  in  our  being  that  God  has  given  to  man 
Eternal  Life  in  His  Son.  It  is  recorded  in  our 
very  being,  inasmuch  as  we  are  alive  with  the 
Eternal  Life  given  in  the  Son  of  God.      Here  I 


LIGHT  OF  ETERNAL  LIFE.  105 

say  is  one  thing,  not  two  but  one,  simple  and 
uncompounded  viz.  a  life  given,  that  life  re- 
ceived— lived.  The  elements  of  this  life  we 
may  conceive  of  as  many,  but  as  a  life  it  is  one 
thing — the  one  thing;  needful ;  and  as  it  is  one 
thing,  so  to  receive  it  is  one  movement  of  our 
being,  implies  one  direction  of  our  attention,  one 
thought,  one  care.  With  a  single  eye  we  may 
look  at  it ;  with  a  simple  and  entire  purpose  of 
heart  cleave  to  it.  What  is  the  relation  of  this 
one  thing  to  the  two  things  of  which  I  have 
spoken  ?  What  is  this  receiving  of  Eternal 
Life,  this  feeding  upon  Christ,  this  accepting  His 
will  to  be  our  will,  this  esteeming  the  elements 
of  His  life  in  humanity,  the  mind  that  was  in 
Him,  His  flesh  and  His  blood,  to  be  meat  indeed 
and  drink  indeed — what  is  it  in  reference  to 
these  two  great  objects  of  attention,  so  carefully 
distinguished,  so  laboriously  and  anxiously  har- 
monized ?  Is  it  Justification  ?  Is  it  Sanctifi- 
cation  %  Is  it  trust  in  the  work  of  Christ — that 
trust  which  is  so  carefully  separated  from  every 
element  of   self-consciousness  or  recognition   of 


106        ABRAHAM  WAS  STROXG  IN  FAITH, 

any  thing  acceptable  to  God  on  the  spiritual 
condition  of  the  individual  ?  or  is  it  the  culture 
of  Christian  graces — that  culture  of  them  to 
which  a  man  sets  himself  as  to  an  employ- 
ment altogether  distinct  from  his  trusting  in 
Christ  for  salvation  ?  It  cannot  be  both  of 
these  if  we  hold  to  the  distinguishing  definitions 
which  are  so  carefully  insisted  upon.  It  is  not 
in  fact  either,  as  we  shall  immediately  see  if  we 
attempt  to  make  it  fit  into  the  definitions  of 
either.  Yet  is  it  beyond  all  question  the  one 
great  reality,  and  as  such  must  it  include  what- 
ever element  of  spiritual  truth  is  in  either. 

Trust  in  Christ  there  is  in  this  relation  of 
spirit  to  Him — trust  of  the  most  intimate,  most 
fundamental  nature,  for  it  is  trust  in  Him  as 
our  life  ;  it  is  really  the  trust  of  the  branch  in 
the  vine — trust  for  the  sap  of  the  vine.  But 
it  manifestly  is  not  a  movement  of  the  human 
spirit  that  can  be  denned  as  men  have  defined 
justifying  faith.  For  though  it  has  reference  to 
the  favour  of  God  as  resting  upon  Christ,  and 
contemplates  that  favour  as  life,  recognizing  the 


GIVING  GIORY  TO  GOD.  107 

life  given  in  Christ  as  indeed  life  because  of  that 
favour, — and  so  having  the  merits  of  Christ,  and 
God's  delight  in  Christ,  at  the  foundation  of  the 
peace  which  accompanies  it, — this  is  not  in  the 
way  of  dividing  between  participation  in  the 
favour  that  rests  on  Christ,  and  participation  in 
the  mind  of  Christ :  on  the  contrary,  participa- 
tion in  the  mind  of  Christ  it  conceives  of  as  that 
condition  of  the  human  spirit  to  which  alone  the 
divine  favour  can  extend.  So  far  is  it  from  con- 
ceiving of  the  faith  of  the  gospel  as  something 
as  to  which  we  must  carefully  guard  against  the 
idea  of  its  being  pleasing  or  acceptable  for  his 
own  sake,  or  indeed  being  more  than  the  mere 
thread  that  in  God's  plan  connects  us  with  that 
in  Christ  which  is  pleasing  and  acceptable,  that 
on  the  contrary  it  recognises  the  call  to  faith 
as  a  call  to  that  exercise  of  man's  being  in  which 
there  is  most  glory  given  to  God ;  as  it  is 
written,  "Abraham  was  strong  in  faith,  giving 
glory  to  God." 

Again,  the  feeding  on  Christ  of  which  I  speak 
is  as  truly  a  culture  of  all  the  graces  of  the 


108  TRUE  RELATION  OF  FAITH 

spirit  as  it  is  a  trust  in  Christ.  But  whatever, 
in  the  actual  experience  of  men  of  God,  is  com- 
mon to  it  and  to  what  is  recognized  as  the 
Sanctincation  to  be  added  to  Justification,  a 
wide  distinction  holds  between  them  in  this, 
that  not  as  fruits  of  faith  needful  to  prove  that 
we  are  justified  and  so  are  saved  are  these 
graces  desired  ;  nor  even,  as  some  have  said, 
feeling  that  they  were  taking  higher  ground,  as 
imparting  the  necessary  meetness  for  heaven  ; 
but  these  graces  are  desired — the  culture  of 
them  is  engaged  in — directly  for  their  own  sake, 
and  not  as  evidences  of  a  saved  state  but  as 
themselves  portions  of  the  salvation  received — 
elements  of  the  Eternal  Life  given  to  us  in 
Christ  and  not  the  mere  meetness  to  receive 
that   life  hereafter. 

Therefore  I  say  that  the  great  reality  of 
eating  the  flesh  of  the  Son  of  man  and  drinking 
His  blood  is  not  to  be  defined  either  in  the 
language  in  which  men  have  spoken  of  Justifi- 
cation, or  in  that  in  which  they  have  spoken 
of  Sanctincation  ;  though  I  do  not  doubt  that  it 


TO  ETERNAL  LITE.  IO9 

has  been  present,  not  unfrequently,  in  the  ex- 
perience which  has  been  described  as  the  one  of 
these,  and  also  in  that  which  has  been  described 
as  the  other.  And  to  this  belief  I  anxiously 
cling,  feeling  thankful  for  all  I  meet  with  in  the 
records  of  Christian  experience  which  justifies 
me  in  clinging  to  it ;  for  it  is  manifest  that,  if 
obliged  to  give  it  up—  if  obliged  to  see  the 
peace  of  many  professing  trust  in  Christ  through 
their  own  definitions  of  justifying  faith  or  their 
own  views  of  the  place  of  the  graces  of  the  spirit 
in  the  Christian  scheme,  —  I  could  no  longer 
think  of  them  as  heirs  of  the  righteousness 
which  is  by  faith,  or  as  partakers  in  that  holi- 
ness without  which  no  man  shall  see  the  Lord. 
If  their  actual  confidence  towards  God,  and  ex- 
pectation of  acceptance  and  acknowledgment  in 
drawing  near  to  Him,  must  be  conceived  of  as 
strictly  according  to  the  belief  that  God  accepts 
them  as  righteous  without  reference  to  their 
receiving  Christ  as  their  life,  on  the  simple  and 
exclusive  ground  of  their  trusting  to  the  merits 
of  His  work ;   or  if  they  must  be  regarded  as 


I  10  ERROR  IN  SYSTEM 

indeed  cultivating  holiness,  truth,  love,  not  for 
their  own  sake,  nor  as  the  ultimate  good  and 
the  elements  of  the  salvation  given  to  them  in 
Christ,  but  just  as  proofs  that  their  faith  is  that 
which  secures  an  interest  in  the  merits  of  Christ, 
and  so  what  will  secure  their  salvation, — then 
are  both  their  confidence  of  acceptance  with 
God  and  their  practical  care  to  do  His  com- 
mandments alien  from  the  righteousness  and 
the  sanctification  known  to  those  who  are  of 
God  in  Christ  Jesus,  and  who  know  Christ  as 
made  of  God  unto  them  "wisdom,  and  right- 
eousness, and  sanctification,  and  redemption." 

But  however  liable  to  abuse,  and  however 
often  abused,  may  be  the  distinction  drawn 
between  the  intellect  and  the  spirit — between 
what  a  man  thinks  and  what  a  man  is — I 
cannot  but  be  thankful  that  it  has  a  foundation 
in  truth  when  I  thus  consider  what,  in  the 
matter  before  us,  giving  up  that  distinction 
would  imply.  And  my  conviction  is,  that  to 
assume  a  necessity  for  holding  that  men's  own 
exposition   of  the    elements   of   their    religious 


WITH  TRUTH  IN  THE  II FE, 


peace  and  hope  is  the  true  exposition  of  them 
would  be,  in  many  of  the  cases  in  which  the 
language  of  a  wrong  system  is  used,  unjust  as 
well  as  painful. 

The  words  which  I  have  just  quoted — "who 
of  God  is  made  unto  us  wisdom,  and  righteous- 
ness, and  sanctification,  and  redemption,"  pre- 
sent the  one  Eternal  Life  given  to  us  in  the 
Son  of  God  in  four  elements  and  aspects.  To 
separate  the  righteousness  spoken  of  and  to 
represent  it  as  ours  on  a  totally  different  prin- 
ciple from  that  on  which  they  are  ours,  regard- 
ing it  as  imputed  while  the  others  are  imparted, 
seems  unnatural  as  an  understanding  of  the 
Apostle's  words,  and  also  a  separating  between 
our  confidence  towards  God  and  our  partici- 
pation in  the  life  of  Christ  which  all  real  ex- 
perience of  that  life  would  teach  men  to  reject. 
Yet  it  may  be  that  the  very  conviction  that 
the  sanctification  is  something  to  be  wrought 
in  us,  and  which  will  be  wrought  in  us,  is  the 
real  reconciling  of  the  conscience  to  the  faith 
that  the  righteousness  is  only  imputed. 


112  HOW  TO  BE   THOUGHT  OF. 

So  also  as  to  the  words — "But  to  him  that 
worketh  not,  but  believeth  on  him  that  justifi- 
eth  the  ungodly,  his  faith  is  counted  for  right- 
eousness," when  men  contend  that  these  words 
recognise  the  co-existence  of  ungodliness  and 
justifying  faith  so  that  a  man  is  pronounced 
just  being  actually  ungodly,  and  will  not  con- 
cede to  the  faith  which  justifies  that  it  is  in  itself 
a  godly  condition  of  the  human  spirit,  regarding 
it  as  only  something  which  connects  the  believer 
with  Christ's  righteousness  ;  so  that,  though  ac- 
tually ungodly,  he  is  accounted  righteous :  it 
may  seem  very  bold  to  separate  between  this 
intellectual  misconception  and  the  state  of  the 
man's  spirit  who  contends  for  it,  and  so  venture 
to  cherish  a  comfort  about  him  from  indica- 
tions of  the  one,  which  seems  forbidden  by  the 
other.  Yet  it  may  be  quite  discernable  that 
the  real  ground  on  which  he  finds  it  possible  to 
believe  in  this  imputation  of  righteousness  as 
co-existent  with  present  ungodliness  is,  that  it 
is  contemplated  as  a  step  towards  the  destruc- 
tion of  ungodliness ;   so  that,  though  no  godli- 


E  VILS  STILL  GREA  T  I  1 3 

ness  be  recognised  in  the  faith  itself,  it  is 
regarded  as  the  power  which  is  to  produce 
godliness. 

Still,  whatever  redeeming  elements  may  be 
present  or  however  conscience  may  be  heard  de- 
manding with  an  authority  that  will  not  be 
gainsayed  a  righteous  character  in  the  peace  of 
mind  that  claims  to  be  peace  with  God,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  departure  from  the  sim- 
plicity that  is  in  Christ  such  as  we  have  been 
considering  must  be  evil,  and  fruitful  of  evil. 

Those  who  are  acquainted  with  the  terms, 
"subjective  religion,"  "objective  religion,"  will 
I  trust,  see  that  I  am  not  simply  contending  for 
the  co-ordinate  importance  of  the  former  and 
the  latter,  or  insisting  upon  the  realization  of 
what  God  calls  on  us  to  be  as  being  an  element 
in  true  religion  as  essential  as  the  faith  of  what 
He  calls  us  to  know  and  believe.  If  what  we 
are  called  on  to  know  and  believe,  the  objective 
in  religion,  be  truly  conceived  of,  that  which  we 
are  called  on  to  be — the  subjective — is  already 
before  us  ;  and  to  be  it,  is  the  imperative  demand 


1 14  AND  DIFFICULT  TO  ESTIMATE. 

addressed  to  us  by  what  we  know  and  believe. 
This  indeed  seems  practically  denied  when  it  is 
felt  necessary  to  say,  "  It  is  not  enough  that  you 
believe  what  you  are  required  to  believe  :  you 
must  also  be  what  you  are  required  to  be."  But 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  objective  de- 
mands the  subjective,  as  truly  as  the  subjective 
presupposes  the  objective.  My  conviction  is 
that  there  is  a  departure  from  the  simplicity 
that  is  in  Christ  alike  in  the  conception  of  what 
we  are  taught  to  believe,  and  of  what  we  are 
expected  to  become  in  believing. 

As  to  the  amount  of  this  departure,  I  feel  it 
difficult  to  avoid  seeming  to  say  either  less  or 
more  than  what  I  feel.  If  I  speak  of  it  spirit- 
ually, I  have  such  a  conviction  of  the  preserving 
power  that  is  in  all  earnest  actual  dealing  with 
God,  in  self-distrust  and  self-despair  and  in  that 
hope  only  which  His  free  grace  inspires,  aided  by 
the  faithfulness  of  a  quickened  conscience,  that 
in  expressing  my  belief  as  to  the  extent  to  which 
the  heart  and  spirit  may  be  in  harmony  with  the 
will  of   God  beyond  what  the   intellect  appre- 


RISK  OF  MISCONCEPTION.  I  I  5 

hends  of  the  divine  counsel,  I  am  in  danger  of 
seeming  to  make  less  account  of  the  error  of 
which  I  have  spoken  than  accords  with  my  per- 
suasion of  its  magnitude.  On  the  other  hand,  if 
I  lay  out  broadly,  as  I  have  at  present  been 
endeavouring  to  do,  the  amount  of  difference  in 
the  intellectual  conception  of  feeding  upon  Christ 
as  the  bread  of  life,  I  am  in  danger  of  seem- 
ing to  conclude  that  if  intellectual  error  be 
operative  at  all,  the  operation  of  such  error  as 
this  must  be  well-nigh  fatal 

I  must  trust  for  sympathy  with  me  in  this  diffi- 
culty to  what  consciousness  the  reader  may  have 
of  the  great  duality,  so  to  speak,  which  is  in  man 
viewed  as  a  spiritual  and  as  an  intellectual 
being ;  and  of  the  slowness  of  our  progress 
towards  perfected  and  inward  unity.  I  will  en- 
deavour to  be  true  to  my  convictions  of  the  evil 
considered  at  once  in  both  its  aspects,  and  call 
the  conditions  of  mind  in  which  it  presents  it- 
self superficial  and  inadequate  views  of  truth. 

I.  That  view  of  the  grace  of  God  I  regard  as 
superficial  and  inadequate  which,  while  it  recog- 


1 1 6     WE  MA  Y  BE  AIDED  BY  CONSIDERING 

nizes  the  freeness  of  the  love  of  God  to  man 
and  man's  exclusive  dependence  on  what  that 
love  spontaneously  gives  to  the  rejection  of  all 
idea  of  claim  or  merit,  does  not  discern  in  that 
freeness  or  in  the  nature  of  the  gift  given  enough 
to  exclude  boasting  on  the  part  of  the  receiver  of 
the  gift.  Hence  carnal  expedients  to  exclude 
boasting,  and  more  especially  the  change  in  the 
conception  of  justifying  faith  from  being  that  of 
the  reception  of  Christ  as  our  life  to  that  of  a 
naked  trust  in  His  work  for  man  as  a  ground  of 
acceptance  with  God. 

2.  That  view  of  the  work  of  Christ  and  of  the 
merits  of  Christ  I  regard  as  superficial  and  inade- 
quate, which,  as  to  the  work  of  Christ,  permits 
us  to  cherish  peace  on  the  ground  that  that  work 
has  been  performed  apart  from  the  recognition 
of  that  call  to  spiritual  participation  in  it  which 
that  work  addresses  to  us  ;  and  which  as  to  the 
merits  of  Christ  calculates  on  God's  rejoicing 
over  a  condition  of  humanity  which  is  not  in 
itself  a  fit  thing  for  God  to  rejoice  over  because 
of  His  delight  in  these  merits  :  while  in  truth  the 


SOME  SUPERFICIAL  11 7 

delight  of  God  in  the  merits  of  Christ  can  war- 
rant no  conclusion  other  than  that  He  will  ever 
delight  in  all  measures  of  that  condition  of 
humanity  of  which  they  are  the  perfection  : — 
the  voice  of  that  delight  uttering  itself  to  us, 
and  for  our  guidance,  being  "  This  is  my  beloved 
Son,  in  whom  I  am  well  pleased ;  hear  ye 
him." 

3.  That  view  of  the  Atonement  and  of  the 
forgiveness  of  sins  I  regard  as  superficial  and 
inadequate  which  rests  in  the  declared  fact  of  the 
Atonement  and  the  forgiveness,  and  which,  as  to 
the  Atonement,  does^  not  apprehend  the  nature 
of  the  condemnation  of  sin  in  the  flesh  which  is 
in  the  sacrifice  of  Christ,  or  the  call  which  it  ad- 
dresses to  us  to  unite  ourselves  to  that  condem- 
nation by  the  rejection  of  the  life  of  the  flesh  ; 
and,  as  to  the  forgiveness,  does  not  imply  any 
communion  in  the  blood  of  Christ,  any  fellow- 
ship in  His  death,  any  discernment  of  that  power 
in  Christ's  blood  which  the  Apostle  recognizes 
when  he  says,  "  If  the  blood  of  bulls  and  of 
goats,  and  the  ashes  of  an  heifer  sprinkling  the 


AND  IX ADEQUATE  VIEWS 


unclean,  sanctifieth  to  the  purifying  of  the  flesh  ; 
how  much  more  shall  the  blood  of  Christ,  who 
through  the  eternal  Spirit  offered  himself  without 
spot  to  God,  purge  your  conscience  from  dead 
works,  to  serve  the  living  God  ? " 

4.  Finally,  I  regard  as  superficial  and  inade- 
quate that  conception  of  our  relation  to  Christ 
as  having  left  us  an  example  that  we  should 
walk  in  His  steps  which,  while  recognizing  the 
outward  form  of  His  life  on  earth  and  in  some 
lower  sense  also  the  inward  regulation  of  His  life 
according  to  the  law  of  righteousness  as  practi- 
cal light  for  our  guidance,  still  leaves  a  broad 
gulf  between  His  confidence  towards  God, 
and  our  confidence  towards  God.  Such  a  gulf 
between  Him  and  us  is  interposed  by  the  er- 
roneous view  of  Justification  by  faith,  against 
which  I  have  been  contending ;  for  that  view 
introduces  a  whole  system  of  thought  and  feel- 
ing into  the  region  of  our  intercourse  with  God, 
and  that  at  the  very  heart  of  that  intercourse,  to 
which  there  is — there  could  be  nothing  parallel 
in  the  example  of  Christ.       Consider  the  mental 


WHICH  PRE  VENT  0  UR  RE  A  CHING         1 1 9 

elements  of  justifying  faith  as  it  has  been  de- 
fined— the  position  consciously  taken  by  the 
human  spirit — the  nature  of  the  confidence 
cherished.  Nothing  of  it  all  is  first  in  Christ — 
nothing  of  it  is  an  element  in  the  Eternal  Life 
revealed  in  Christ.  It  is  no  form  of  the  spirit  of 
Christ.  The  confidence  it  includes  is  not  one  in 
nature  with  that  which  accompanies  the  spirit 
of  sonship,  and  is  of  its  essence  according  to  the 
words,  "  There  is  no  fear  in  love — perfect  love 
casteth  out  fear."  This  is  evident ;  and  I  do 
not  suppose  that  any  will  contend  that  the  kind 
of  confidence  which  is  held  to  accompany  what 
is  called  justifying  faith,  is  one  in  nature  with 
that  of  the  Son  towards  the  Father.  But  the 
conclusion  that  the  conception  of  the  example 
of  Christ  which  recognizes  at  this  point  so  great 
a  gulf  between  Him  and  us  is  superficial  and 
inadequate  may  not  be  so  readily  conceded. 
Yet  I  cannot  judge  otherwise  as  I  understand 
the  words  of  our  Lord,  "  I  am  the  way,  and  the 
truth,  and  the  life.  No  man  cometh  unto  the 
Father  but  by  me."      In  fellowship  with  Him  as 


!20  THE  SIMPLICITY 

the  truth  and  the  life  is  the  Lord  known  as  the 
way.  No  man  cometh  unto  the  Father  but  by 
Him,  inasmuch  as  humanity  cannot  attain  to 
God  but  in  the  Eternal  Life  given  in  the  Son  of 
God.  No  other  conscious  condition  of  humanity 
is  nearness  to  God  but^Lhat^which  is  presented 
to  us  in  the  humanity  of  Christ.  For  not  as  a 
mere  permission  to  come — a  personal  liberty 
and  warrant  to  come — are  we  to  conceive  of  our 
access  to  God  in  Christ,  but  as  a  spiritual  power 
to  draw  near  to  God  in  newness  of  life ;  as  the 
Apostle  says  of  Jew  and  Gentile,  "Through  him 
we  both  have  access  by  one  spirit  unto  the 
Father."  To  sonship  are  we  called  in  the  Son 
of  God.  In  the  confidence  inherent  in  sonship 
are  we  called  to  follow  God  as  dear  children 
walking  in  love.  In  the  very  inmost  experience 
pertaining  to  our  intercourse  with  God  are  we  to 
have  the  consciousness  of  following  our  Lord 
and  walking  in  his  steps.  If  the  example  left 
us  by  our  Lord  as  the  first  born  among  many 
brethren  has  this  extent,  can  we  be  called  to 
the  exercise  of  a  faith  and  confidence  towards 


THA  T  IS  IN  CHRIST.  1 2 1 

the   Father  alien  from   His  and  impossible  for 
Him  ? 

I  have  chosen  the  expressions  "  superficial 
and  inadequate,"  rather  than  erroneous,  because 
practically,  if  not  logically,  they  more  truly 
state  the  fact.  And  I  am  not  a  little  anxious 
that  where  there  is  a  true  trust  in  Christ  in  con- 
nection with  the  forms  of  thought  to  which  I 
object  it  should  be  felt  that  I  am  only  urging 
progress  in  a  path  already  entered  upon.  It  is 
not  any  form  of  self-trust  as  opposed  to  trust  in 
Christ  for  which  I  call,  but  a  more  perfect  nega- 
tion of  self-trust,  and  a  more  absolute,  and 
deeper,  and  all-embracing  trust  in  Christ  than 
can  be  known  otherwise  ;  the  opposition  being 
not  between  my  own  works  and  Christ's  work, 
but  between  my  own  life  and  Christ's  life :  that 
which  is  given  up  being,  not  my  works  alone 
but  the  life  of  flesh  which  took  form  in  them  ; 
what  is  recognized  and  accepted  as  the  gift  of 
God,  being  not  Christ's  work  alone  but  the 
Eternal  Life  in  Christ  which  took  form  in  His 
work. 


122  PERPLEXITIES  THAT  ARISE. 

And  many  and  perplexing  to  the  spirit  are 
the  confusions  which  arise  from  stopping  short 
of  this  apprehension  of  justifying  faith.  Life  is 
said  to  be  in  God's  favour ;  and  God's  favour 
rests  upon  Christ.  "  This  is  my  beloved  Son,  in 
whom  I  am  well  pleased."  And,  that  that 
favour  may  rest  upon  us  and  so  life  in  God's 
favour  be  our  portion,  the  Father's  call  to  us  is, 
"  Hear  ye  him."  And  so,  being  taught  of  God, 
we  listen  to  the  voice  of  the  good  Shepherd  and 
His  word  is  fulfilled  in  us,  "  My  sheep  hear  my 
voice,  and  I  know  them,  and  they  follow  me  : 
and  I  give  unto  them  eternal  life."  So  we  re- 
ceive life  in  hearing  the  Son  in  obedience  to  the 
teaching  of  the  Father ;  life  both  as  viewed  in 
itself,  the  fellowship  of  the  mind  of  Christ,  and 
as  viewed  with  reference  to  the  divine  favour — 
participation  in  that  favour  which  rests  on  Christ. 
So,  whether  we  think  of  life  as  the  reality  in 
Christ,  the  law  of  the  spirit  of  the  life  that  is  in 
Him,  or  as  the  favour  and  acceptance  and  per- 
sonal acknowledgment  of  God,  one  direction  is 
given  to  our  attention — on  one  thing  is  our  hope 


PERPLEXITIES  THA  T  ARISE.  1 2  3 

fixed,  viz.,  that  obedience  to  the  will  of  Christ 
— that  receiving  Him  as  the  Lord  of  our  spirits : 
that  eating  His  flesh  and  drinking  His  blood  of 
which  I  have  been  speaking. 

But  if  in  respect  to  life  as  what  exists  in  God's 
favour,  we  are  directed  to  keep  our  minds  trust- 
ing in  what  Christ  has  done,  thinking  of  God  as 
^^^3KM^th^J^9Xkoi _ Christ,  and  not  at  us  at 
all,  while  in  respect  to  life  as  a  condition  of  our 
own  being,  we  are  directed  to  look  to  the  Spirit 
of  Christ  to  work  in  us  that  holiness  without 
which  no  man  may  see  the  Lord, — surely  by 
such  teaching  distraction  is  introduced  into  our 
thoughts  of  life  and  practical  embarrassment 
into  our  pursuit  of  life. 

Or,  to  look  at  the  same  reality  in  an  aspect  a 
little  different,  the  divine  favour  is  connected 
with  the  region  of  conscience  in  man  inasmuch 
as  it  is  there  that  God  expresses  to  man  his 
pleasure  and  displeasure.  No  one  denies  that 
while  we  are  without  Christ  the  voice  in  con- 
science condemns  what  we  are;  and  however 
Scripture  may  have  been  instrumental  in  awaken- 


124  PERPLEXITIES  THAT  ARISE. 

ing  conscience,  or  in  helping  us  to  understand  the 
condemnation  addressed  to  us  by  conscience,  no 
one  is  regarded  as  spiritually  convinced  of  sin 
whose  conviction  that  he  is  a  sinner  is  not  im- 
mediate and  direct,  the  result  of  seeing  himself  in 
the  light  of  truth,  and  not  a  doctrinal  inference 
from  the  statements  of  Scripture.  Now  what  is 
thus  condemned  is  the  life  of  the  flesh — the  old 
man — and  ourselves  personally  as  living  that  life. 
When,  then,  another  life,  the  life  of  Christ,  is  re- 
vealed to  us  in  the  Spirit  as  the  Father's  gift  to 
us  in  the  Son,  and  we  receive  it  to  be  our  life, 
feeding  upon  Christ,  the  favour  of  God  resting 
on  this  life,  and  now  upon  us  on  our  choosing 
this  life,  is  testified  also  in  the  conscience,  just  as 
the  divine  displeasure  formerly  was  ;  and  neither 
is  now  the  conviction  that  we  are  righteous  in 
God's  sight,  any  more  than  formerly  the  con- 
viction of  sin,  a  doctrinal  inference  from  the 
statements  of  Scripture  ;  but  the  immediate  and 
direct  result  of  seeing  ourselves  in  the  light  of 
truth.  As  the  divine  testimony  within  was 
formerly  against  us,  it  now  is  for  us,  "the  Spirit 


PERPLEXITIES  THAT  ARISE.  1 25 

itself  bearing  witness  with  our  spirit  that  we  are 
the  children  of  God." 

But  adopt  the  view  of  Justification  to  which  I 
have  objected,  and  substitute  for  this  conscious 
reception  of  that  life  on  which  the  divine  favour 
rests  and  consequent  personal  sense  of  divine 
favour,  a  mental  reference  to  the  work  of  Christ 
as  ascribed  to  us  and  a  keeping  of  our  own 
actual  condition  out  of  sight  altogether,  and 
manifestly  the  peace  so  attained  is  cherished  in 
the  way  of  a  doctrinal  inference  from  statements 
of  Scripture,  and  is  no  direct  testimony  of  the 
conscience  at  all;  neither  presents  that  parallel 
to  the  sense  of  guilt  and  condemnation  which, 
in  the  true  view,  is  so  close,  and  gives  to  the 
peace  enjoyed  so  deep  a  foundation. 

I  have  ventured  to  describe  this  careful  keep- 
ing away  from  the  recognition  of  the  conscious- 
ness of  receiving  Christ  as  our  life,  when  the 
way  in  which  it  comes  to  pass  that  the  favour 
of  God  which  rests  upon  Christ  comes  to  rest 
upon  us,  is  set  forth  as  a  carnal  expedient  for 
excluding  boasting  ;  for  it  seems  to  be  suggested 


126  UNSUCCESSFUL  ENDEAVOUR 

by  the  fear  that  we  could  not  without  boasting 
say  directly,  as  the  Apostle  says,  "  If  our  heart 
condemn  us  not,  then  have  we  confidence  toward 
God," — "  Herein  is  our  love  made  perfect  that 
we  may  have  boldness  in  the  day  of  judgment : 
because  as  he  is,  so  are  we  in  this  world."  I 
believe  that,  Christ  being  revealed  in  us  the  hope 
of  glory,  boasting  will  be  excluded  alike  by 
the  consciousness  that  we  have  but  what  we 
have  received,  and  by  the  nature  of  that  which 
we  have  received  ;  for  if  we  have  received  Christ 
to  be  our  life,  we,  in  the  deepest  sense,  have 
learned  of  Him  who  is  meek  and  lowly  in  heart. 
But  is  boasting  excluded  by  the  expedient 
adopted  ?  To  say  that  it  is  a  carnal  expedient 
— a  human  device,  and  not  a  divine  counsel,  is 
to  suggest  that  it  is  not.  And  my  conviction  is, 
that  while  true  faith  excludes  boasting  because 
it  is  in  its  nature  the  right  position  of  the  spirit 
towards  God,  the  hope  of  guarding  against 
boasting  by  holding  that  we  are  not  to  boast 
of  faith  because  it  is  but  the  link  that  connects 
us  with  that  work  of  Christ  in  which  it  is  that 


TO  HARMONIZE.  1 27 

God  has  pleasure,  is  futile  ;  for,  say  to  ourselves 
what  we  will  about  it,  faith,  after  all,  makes  the 
difference  between  us  and  others  that  believe 
not,  but  for  whom,  as  for  us,  Christ  died  :  and  if 
it  were,  as  on  this  scheme  it  would  be,  an  act  of 
acceptance  on  our  part  of  an  arbitrary  arrange- 
ment, and  not  a  spiritual  apprehension  of  the 
Eternal  Life,  there  would  be  room  for  self-com- 
placency in  the  consciousness  that  we  had  ac- 
cepted and  so  done  our  part  ;  and  in  this  way 
the  most  pure  self-righteousness  might  be  present 
under  the  guise  of  the  negation  of  self-right- 
eousness. How  true  do  we  thus  see  the  in- 
stinct of  spiritual  men  to  have  been  who,  in 
connection  with  this  system,  have  given  earnest 
warning  of  the  danger  of  making  a  Christ  of  our 
faith !  Nay,  have  they  not  still  further  mani- 
fested distrust  in  the  expedient  of  their  system 
for  excluding  boasting,  when,  after  reducing 
faith  to  the  most  naked  conception  of  a  link  or 
a  thread,  that  it  might  not  interfere  with  the 
place  given  to  the  work  of  Christ,  the  further 
security  has  been  had  recourse  to  of  regarding 


1 2  8  LIGHT  RE  VEALS  UNITY. 

that  faith  itself  as  in  such  a  sense  the  work  of 
God,  and  a  special  putting  forth  of  divine  power, 
as  that,  on  that  ground  also,  boasting  would  be 
excluded :  a  view  of  the  origin  of  faith, — how- 
ever near  the  truth  of  the  due  recognition  of 
the  drawing  of  the  Father, — not  in  harmony, 
certainly,  with  the  care  taken  to  preclude  the 
idea  of  their  being  any  thing  of  the  nature  of 
righteousness  inherent  in  the  faith  itself. 

But  may  we  not  say — "  Salvation  has  God  ap- 
pointed for  walls  and  bulwarks."  Light  is  its 
own  wall  against  darkness.  The  life  of  Christ  is 
the  light  of  men.  That  life  saves  from  boasting 
the  man  who  receives  it  to  be  his  life. 

The  confusion  introduced  into  our  thoughts  of 
Eternal  Life  when  the  divine  favour  is  separated 
from  the  life  of  Christ  and  referred  to  the  work 
of  Christ,  and  we  are  taught  to  expect  partici- 
pation in  that  favour,  not  in  receiving  Christ's 
life  to  be  our  life,  but  in  having  His  work  im- 
puted to  us ;  and  the  corresponding  confusion 
introduced  into  the  region  of  conscience,  when 


CHRISTIAN  PRAYER 


129 


the  divine  acknowledgment  of  the  righteousness 
of  faith  is  regarded  as  altogether  different  in  its 
nature  from  the  divine  condemnation  of  sin, 
and,  while  the  latter  is  admitted  to  be  a  direct 
testimony  of  God  condemning  what  we  are,  the 
former  is  represented  as  not  a  testimony  to  the 
condition  of  our  spirits  at  all — these  practical 
perplexities  introduced  into  the  inner  life,  in 
the  region  of  justifying  faith,  necessarily  extend 
themselves  in  corresponding  forms  into  the  re- 
gion of  worship. 

The  intimacy  of  the  relation  between  feeding 
upon  Christ  as  the  bread  of  life  and  worshipping 
God  through  Christ  has  already  engaged  our 
attention  in  connection  with  another  error.  It 
comes  before  us  again  here ;  for  it  could  not  have 
been  that  a  wrong  conception  of  Justification  by 
faith  could  have  failed  to  introduce  a  wrong  con- 
ception of  praying  in  Christ's  name — of  expect- 
ing an  answer  to  prayer  for  Christ's  sake. 

The  conception  of  Christian  worship  which 
has  been  expressed  above,  and  to  which  a  res- 
ponse in  other  minds  has  been  hoped  for,  is,  that 


u 


IaJ 


13°  IN  THE  NAME  OF  CHRIST  AXD 

it  is  the  Eternal  Life  in  the  form  of  worship — 
that  living  acknowledgment  of  what  God  is,  and 
hope  towards  Him  in  oneness  of  mind  with  what 
He  is,  which  accord  with  the  language — "  wor- 
ship in  spirit  and  in  truth."  It  is  the  Eternal 
Life  which  comes  to  us  through  the  Son,  ascend- 
ingfrom  us  through  the  Son — the  Son  in  us 
honouring  the  Father — the  worship  of  Sonship 
— as  such  grateful  to  the  Father,  whojseeketh 
such  worship.  Freedom  and  confidence  of 
acknowledgment  are  of  the  very  nature  of  such 
worship  ;  arising  necessarily  from  the  oneness  of 
the  Spirit,  causing  oneness  of  mind  and  will  in 
the  worshippers  and  in  Him  who  is  worshipped. 
Insuch  worship  there  is  a  continual  living  pre- 
sentation  of  Christ  to  the  Father — a  continual 
drawing  upon  the  delight  of  the  Father  in  the 
Son — the  outgoing  of  a  confidence  that,  what- 
ever is  asked  in  Christ's  name — in  the  light  of 
His  name — in  the  faith  of  the  Father's  ac- 
knowledgment of  that  name — will  be  received. 
The  praises  rendered — the  desires  cherished — 
the  prayers  offered — are  all  within  the  circle  of 


6 


ACCORDING  TO  THE   WILL  OF  GOD.         ljl 

the  life  of  Christ,  and  ascend  with  the  assurance 
of  partaking  in  the  favour  which  pertains  to  that 
life — which  rests  upon  Him  who  is  that  life.  It 
is  worship  according  to  the  words  of  S.  Paul — 
"For  we  are  the  circumcision,  which  worship 
God  in  the  spirit,  and  rejoice  in  Christ  Jesus, 
and  have  no  confidence  in  the  flesh."  If  we 
change  the  language  in  which  we  speak  of  this 
worship,  and,  instead  of  using  that  of  our  Lord 
when  He  teaches  us  that  what  we  "ask  the  Father 
in  his  name"  shall  be  given  to  us,  say  in  the 
words  of  the  Apostle  John,  "And  this  is  the  confi- 
dence that  we  have  in  him,  that,  if  we  ask  any- 
thing according  to  his  will,  he  heareth  us :  and  if 
we  know  that  he  hear  us,  whatsoever  we  ask,  we 
know  that  we  have  the  petitions  that  we  desired 
of  him,"  we  feel  that  we  have  only  changed  the 
form  of  expression,  and  that  it  is  one  confidence 
which  in  either  way  is  equally  truly  expressed  ; 
as  indeed  how  could  it  be  otherwise  ?  Our  Lord 
could  not  put  confidence  as  to  the  answer  of 
prayer  on  one  footing,  and  the  Apostle  put  it  on 
another. 


I32  THE   CONFUSIOX  OF  THOUGHT 

But  I  have  said  that  a  wrong  concejDtior^  of 
justification  by  faith  could  not  fail  to  introduce 
a  wrong  conception  of  praying  in  Christ's  name  ; 
and  we  know  that,  in  point  of  fact,  men  have 
followed  out  a  system  consistently  at  the  ex- 
pense of  giving  to  the  expressions  of  our  Lord 
in  placing  the  assurance  of  an  answer  to  prayer 
on  the  ground  of  its  being  offered  in  His  name 
a  meaning  altogether  different  from  that  now 
assumed  according  to  which  these  expressions 
are  synonymous  with  those  of  the  Apostle  which 
rest  that  assurance  on  harmony  with  the  divine 
will  in  the  prayer  itself.  When,  in  the  close  of 
a  prayer,  it  is  added  that  an  answer  is  expected 
for  Christ's  sake  and  on  the  ground  of  His 
j&erits,  we  know  that  it  is  not  intended  by  such 
language  to  claim  for  the  prayer  which  has 
preceded  the  character  of  having  been  offered  in 
Christ's  spirit — of  having  been  an  utterance  of 
the  life  of  Christ  in  the  worshipper.  Were  such 
the  meaning  intended  the  use  of  the  words 
would  accord  with  what  our  Lord  really  teaches 
when  He  instructs  us  to  pray  in  His  name.    But 


AS  TO  JUSTIFICATION 


the  sense  in  which  they  are  employed  is  alto- 
gether different.  As  men  employ  them  they 
express  a  passing  away  from  the  character  of 
the  prayer  itself  and  a  disclaiming  of  any  hope 
from  that  character,  and  a  betaking  of  them- 
selves, on  the  part  of  the  worshippers,  to  the 
name  of  Christ,  as  affording  a  ground  of  con- 
fidence which  the  spirit  of  the  prayer  itself  has 
not  furnished.  As  if,  while  the  Apostle  directs 
attention  to  the  nature  and  essence  of  the 
prayer  itself — its  harmony  with  the  divine  will, 
our  Lord  meant  to  turn  us  away  from  this,  and 
to  fix  our  hope  on  His  own  merits  as  affording  a 
confidence  altogether  independent  of  harmony 
with  the  divine  will  in  the  prayer,  and  which 
should  sustain  hope  even  under  the  conscious- 
ness that  the  prayer  itself  had  no  claim  to  be 
heard,  nor  fitness  to  awaken  a  response  in  the 
heart  of  God.  The  coherence  and  harmony  of 
a  system  here  is  undeniable.  As  in  seeking 
justification  the  mind  is  trained  to  turn  away 
from  its  own  conscious  attitude  towards  God  as 
the  giver  of  Eternal  Life  in  His  Son,  to  engage 


134 


EXISTS  ALSO  AS  TO  PR  A  YER. 


in  a  mental  reference  to  the  imputed  work  of 
Christ ;  so  injoj^^j^is^rAined  to  turn  away 
from  the  spirit  and  nature  of  its  own  cry  to  God, 
and  to  build  its  hope  of  an  answer  on  its  pre- 
senting Christ's  merits  to  the  Father _  as  the 
ground  on  which  it  pleads.  But  just  as  we  have 
seen  that  the  former  mental  process  differs  from 
that  which  the  Apostle  recognizes  when  he  says, 
"  if  our  hearts  condemn  us  not,  then  have  Ave 
confidence  towards  God,"  so  is  it  manifest  that 
the  latter  mental  process  differs  from  that  which 
the  same  Apostle  recognizes  when  he  says,  "  if 
we  ask  any  thing  according  to  his  will  he 
heareth  us."  And  thus  the  perplexity  and 
confusion  introduced  into  the  region  of  Justifi- 
cation by  faith  extend  themselves  into  the  region 
of  prayex  And  our  Lord  in  teaching  us  to 
expect  an  answer  because  we  pray  in  His  name, 
and  the  Apostle  in  teaching  us  to  expect  an 
answer  because  we  ask  things  according  to  the 
Father's  will,  are  made  to  be  to  us  as  two 
masters  presenting  to  us  totally  distinct  grounds 
of  confidence  in  drawing  near  to  God. 


I 


THE  DIVINE  LA  W  OF  PR  A  YER.  1 3  5 

But  the  law  of  the  kingdom  of  God  according 
to  which  prayer  in  the  name  of  the  Son  is 
answered,  and  that  according  to  which  prayer 
for  things  according  to  the  Father's  will  is 
answered,  are  one  and  the  same  law.  For  to 
ask  in  the  name  of  the  Son  is  to  ask  in  the 
light  of  the  name  of  Him  in  whom  the  Father  is 
well-pleased.  In  answering  such  prayer  Godjs 
not  granting  for  Christ's  sake  what  for  its  own 
sake  He  would  not  grant.  He  is  granting  that 
which  His  delight  in  Christ  reveals  His  eternal 
willingness  to  grant.  In  its  most  imperfect 
lisping  of  the  Father's  name  the  life  of  the  Son 
jnjas  is  that  same  life  on  which  in  our  Lord  at 
the  right  hand  of  the  Father  the  light  of  the 
Father's  countenance  ever  shines.  It  is  this  one- 
ness of  the  Eternal  Life  in  its  feeblest  dawn  in 
us,  and  in  its  fulness  in  Christ,  which  identifies 
us  and  our  hope  and  confidence  with  that  ful- 
ness "  connecting  us  and  glory  in  one  thought," 
in  a  way  that  sometimes  presents  itself  as  an 
explanation  of  the  origin  of  the  faith  of  the 
imputation  of  righteousness.    For  on  this  ground 


13^  SUBSTITUTES  FOR 

the  babe  in  Christ,  in  whom  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  is  as  a  grain  of  mustard  seed,  is  taught 
to  cherish  the  desire  and  to  offer  the  prayer 
into  which  the  life  of  Christ  forms  itseff  with  a 
confidence  of  acceptance  which  is  according 
to  the  faith  of  the  delight  of  the  Father  in  the 
Son. 

The  use  which  has  just  been  made  of  the 
relation  between  feeding  upon  Christ  as  the 
bread  of  life  and  worshipping  God  through 
Him,  in  endeavouring  to  bring  out  the  evil  of 
erroneous  conceptions  of  Justification  by  faith 
and  of  praying  in  Christ's  name,  will  recall  to 
my  readers  the  application  of  it  formerly  made 
in  considering  the  subject  of  the  Mass.  The 
parallelism  of  these  spiritual  operations — feed- 
ing on  Christ,  and  praying  through  Christ — to 
the  two  parts  of  the  Mass  was  then  considered 
as  at  once  illustrating  the  relation  of  these  two 
aspects  of  the  life  of  faith,  and  confirming  the 
view  that  the  Mass  was  in  relation  to  that  life, 
not  a  witness,  as  the  Lord's  Supper  is,  but  a  sub- 
stitute, and  any  whose  intelligent  sympathy   I 


THE  SPIR1 T  OF  PR  A  YER  1 3  7 

have  been  receiving  will  agree  with  me  that  we 
have  now  met  another  ^substitute  for  the  life  of 
faith — a  substitute  also  for  that  life  in  both  its 
aspects,  as  feeding  upon  Christ,  and  worshipping 
through  Christ — within  the  circle  of  Protestant- 
ism,— less  gross  than  the  Mass  of  Romanism, 
and  therefore  more  suited  to  an  intellectual  age, 
but  in  being  so,  only  .more  dangerous  to  us. 
The  saying  of  Luther,  that  if  the  Pope  would 
allow  him  to  preach  Justification  by  faith  he 
would  not  object  to  the  Mass,  has  been  referred 
to  above  as  indicating,  that  at  the  time  he  so 
spoke  he  did  not  clearly  apprehend  how  sub- 
versive of  the  Mass,  and  of  all  that  is  cognate  to 
the  Mass,  Justification  by  faith  really  is.  But 
that  preaching  Justification  by  faith  should 
destroy  men's  belief  in  the  Mass  is  a  result  that 
can  be  rejoiced  in  only  in  so  far  as  it  is  the 
truth  of  Justification  by  faith  which  takes  the 
place  of  that  delusion.  If  indeed  men  cease 
from  using  the  consecrated  material  substance 
in  that  service  as  the  food  of  Eternal  Life 
because  it  is  no  longer  regarded  by  them  as  the 


S 


138  ROMA  X  1ST 


body  and  blood  of  the  Lord,  and,  so  ceasing, 
turn  to  the  engrafted  word  and  feed  upon  it, 
receiving  the  life  of  Christ  to  be  their  life,  the 
change  is  one  in  which  to  rejoice  ;  and  if  men 
cease  to  offer  the  eucharistic  offering  in  the 
Mass  because  they  no  longer  believe  that 
therein  Christ  is  offered  to  the  Father,  and  so 
ceasing,  engage  in  that  worship  in  spirit  and  in 
truth  which  is  the  living  presentation  of  Christ  /- 
to  the  Father  in  that  worship  of  sonship_which  is  \V  ' 
the  worshipping  form^of^the  _Eternal  Life  given 
to  us  in  the  Son^this  change  also  is  one  in 
which  to  rejoice.  But  that  the  Mass  should 
give  place,  not  to  the  spiritual  reality  of  which 
it  is  the  counterfeit,  but  to  an  intellectual  oper- 
ation which  in  reference  to  the  great  spiritual 
reality  is  but  a  counterfeit  also — in  this  there 
is  nothing  in  which  to  rejoice.  An  intellectual 
substitute  for  the  life  of  Christ  is  not  less  fatal 
than  a  material  substitute.  The  mental  oper- 
ation of  reference  to  Christ's  work  assumed  to 
be  imputed  to  us  is  no  more  able  to  supply  the 
place  of  receiving  Christ  as  our  life  than  the 


AND  PROTESTANT.  139 

physical  operation  of  feeding  upon  the  material 
substance  assumed  to  be  transubstantiated  into 
the  body  and  blood  of  the  Lord :  and  the 
mental  pleading  of  Christ's  merits  in  prayer  is 
no  more  able  to  supply  the  place  of  praying  in 
the  Spirit  of  Christ  than  the  physical  act  of 
offering  up  the  eucharistic  offering.  The  physi- 
cal substitute  for  the  life  of  faith  assumes  a 
physical  mystery.  Does  not  the  intellectual  sub- 
stitute assume  a  moral  mystery  ?  The  former 
is  without  witness  in  the  conscience  and  is 
taken  upon  trust  in  the  way  of  implicit  faith. 
Is  not  this  true  of  the  latter  also  ?  The 
Romanist  receives  Transubstantiation,  accepting 
the  Scriptures  as  interpreted  by  the  Church, 
and  feels  no  need  of  any  corresponding  light  in 
conscience.  The  Protestant  who  receives  im- 
putation of  righteousness  is  accepting  the  same 
Scriptures  as  interpreted  by  himself,  and  he 
also  feels  no  need  of  a  corresponding  light  in 
conscience.  Let  us  not  be  misled  by  the  fact 
that  the  latter  goes  directly  to  the  Scriptures, 
while  the   former   suffers  the   Church  to  come 


14°  THE  SCRIPTURES 

between  him  and  the  Scriptures.     However  im- 
portant in  other  views  this  difference  is  it  affects 
not  the   matter  before  us.     The   Church  which 
demands    from   men   implicit  faith   in  her  own 
teaching  and  forbids  their  seeking  individually 
to  see  light  in  God's  light  does  not  err  merely 
because  her  claim  to  infallibility  is  unwarranted  : 
— she  would  err  in  making  such  a  demand  even 
were  she  infallible.     And  when  we  go  direct  to 
the  infallible  record,   if  we  regard  the  inspired 
men  who  speak  to  us  there  as  making  a  demand 
for  faith  such  as  the  Church  of  Rome  makes, 
reconciling   ourselves   to    the    demand   because 
they  are  inspired,  we  greatly  err.     They  make 
no  such  demand.      We  may  think  to  honour 
their  inspiration  by  holding  what  we  understand 
them  to  teach  not  recognizing  any  need  for  a 
corresponding   light   in    conscience ;   but   in   so 
doing  we  shall  be  giving  to  the  record  of  their 
teaching  a  place  which  as  living  men  they  did 
not  themselves  take.     Shall  we  supersede  con- 
science to  make  room  for  the  authority  of  men 
whose  testimony  concerning  themselves  is  that 


AS  WELL  AS  THE  CHURCH  H1 

by  manifestation  of  the  truth  they  commend 
themselves  to  every  man's  conscience  in  the 
sight  of  God  ?  These  teachers  sent  from  God 
sought  not  to  supersede  the  teaching  of  God. 
The  answer  of  a  good  conscience  towards  God 
through  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  Christ  from 
the  dead  to  which  they  laboured  to  raise  men  is 
a  condition  of  the  human  conscience  spiritually 
educated  and  developed,  not  a  peace  in  the 
reception  of  a  moral  mystery  which  has  no 
corresponding  light  in  conscience  and  is  held  in 
a  way  of  implicit  faith. 

The  necessity  for  our  being  all  taught  of  God 
is  if  possible,  a  more  important  subject  of 
thought  than  that  which  has  now  led  us  to  it — 
at  least  more  radical ;  but  I  attempt  not  to  dis- 
cuss it  here.  This  important  consideration  it 
suggests  with  general  reference  to  what  is  going 
on  around  us,  viz.  that  Protestants  take  wrong 
ground  with  Romanists  when  controverting  the  ,  J 
necessity  for  an  infallible  Church,  evading  the 
conclusions  drawn  from  the  diversity  of  opinion 
originated  by  the  exercise  of  the  right  of  private 


\> 


142  PUT  BETWEEN  MAX  AXD  GOD. 

judgment,  and  taking  their  stand  upon  the  ab- 
stract truth  of  the  Scriptures  ;  not  recognizing 
the  need  there  is — as  surely  there  is  need — in 
some  way  to  bridge  over  the  gulf  between  the 
abstract  truth  of  the  record  and  the  certainty 
that  an  individual  reader  of  the  record  has  hold 
of  the  truth.  Protestants  do  not  look  this 
matter  full  in  the  face.  Surely  it  is  one  thing  to 
know  that  the  Bible  is  true,  and  another  thing 
to  know  that  I  myself  am  in  the  light  of  the 
truth  that  is  in  the  Bible.  To  say  I  judge  for 
myself  as  to  the  meaning  of  what  I  read,  is,  as 
respects  certainty,  to  say  nothing,  unless  I  can 
add  that  I  myself  am  infallible.  The  real  fact  is 
that  it  is  not  the  place  of  the  Bible  that  the 
Church  of  Rome  has  taken  in  claiming  infalli- 
bility, but  the  place  of  the  living  God — whose 
voice  heard  and  known  alone  gives  individual 
certainty  of  being  in  the  light  of  life.  The 
Romanist  looks  to  the  Church  to  interpret  the 
Scriptures  that  he  may  certainly  know  the 
meaning  of  what  he  reads  :  the  man  of  God  ex- 
pects and  waits  upon  the  teaching  of  God,  and 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  MASS  1 43 

so  expects  to  understand  that  which  he  reads. 
For  in  God's  light  alone  does  the  individual  hu- 
man spirit  see  light  clearly.  Spiritual  light  as 
natural  light  is  its  own  witness.  Let  us  who  call 
ourselves  Protestants  in  this  matter  consider 
how  far  in  our  dealing  with  Romanists  we  are 
found  obeying  that  word  of  the  Lord,  "First 
cast  out  the  beam  out  of  thine  own  eye,  and 
then  shalt  thou  see  clearly  to  cast  out  the  mote 
out  of  thy  brother's  eye."  Until  we  ourselves 
give  the  right  place  to  conscience  and  the  teach- 
ing of  God  we  cannot  really  help  Romanists. 
For  of  Romanism,  however  varied  the  forms  of 
error  which  it  presents,  this  is  the  root  evil — 
that  it  addresses  not  conscience,  neither  directs 
men  to  the  living  God,  to  be  taught  of  Him. 

Third, — Development  of  the  Mass  from  the 
Lord's  Supper. 

If  I  have  carried  the  reader  along  with  me 
in  the  attempt  now  made  to  illustrate  that 
feeding  upon  Christ  in  the  deep  movements 
of  the  will  by  which  we  call  Him  Lord  in  the 


144  FROM  THE  LORD'S  SUPPER. 

Spirit  I  have  accomplished  my  great  object. 
Darkness  on  this  subject  is  our  greatest  danger 
in  relation  to  Romanism,  while  we  have  also 
seen  that  the  error  which  in  Romanism  has 
assumed  a  form  to  us  gross  and  palpable  exists 
among  ourselves  in  forms  more  refined  and 
undefined  but  tending  to  the  same  result ;  viz., 
hiding  the  vital  truth  that  Christ  is  the  Bread 
of  Life,  perverting  to  this  end  the  very  ordinance 
which  has  been  appointed  for  keeping  the  sense 
of  this  aspect  of  our  relation  to  Christ  fresh  and 
powerful. 

What  is  written  will  have  prepared  us  for 
some  profitable  consideration  of  the  develop- 
ment of  the  Mass  of  Romanism  from  the  sacred 
institution  of  the  Lord's  Supper. 

How  has  this  development  arisen  ?  The 
question  is  one  of  much  historical  interest,  for 
this  development  has  not  been  an  event  in  the 
history  of  some  obscure  sect :  it  very  early 
impressed  its  character  visibly  on  the  worship 
of  the  Church,  as  early  liturgies  show — though 
the  transition  from  a  figurative  to  a  literal  use 


TRUE  IMPORTANCE  OF  THE  CHANGE.      1 45 

of  words  is  not  easily  marked — and  through 
the  great  extent  of  Christendom  Transubstan- 
tiation  came  to  be  held  as  a  dogma,  and  has 
affected  religion  according  to  the  measure  in 
which  it  has  been  a  faith. 

But  the  solemn  interest  of  the  subject  is  not 
the  greatness  of  the  error  for  which  faith  is 
asked,  but  the  importance  of  the  truth  which 
it  is  the  tendency  of  that  error  to  hide.  This 
is  scarcely  felt  as  it  ought  to  be.  Men  are 
occupied  with  resisting  the  demand  for  a  pros- 
tration of  reason  made  by  Transubstantiation 
.rather  than  with  the  infinite  spiritual  loss  to 
which  they  are  exposed  by  what  so  powerfully 
tends  to  divert  faith  from  Christ  as  the  bread 
of  life. 

Apprehending  as  the  inmost  aspect  of  faith 
that  it  is  a  feeding  upon  Christ  in  the  movements 
of  the  will  by  which  we  call  Him  Lord  in  the 
Spirit,  we  understand  the  character  and  value  of 
the  Lord's  Supper  as  an  abiding  witness-bearing 
to  our  relation  to  Christ  as  our  life.  Its  voice  is 
"  we  are  crucified  with  Christ :  nevertheless  we 

K 


14-6        MEANING  OF  THE  LORD'S  SUPPER 

live  ;  yet  not  we,  but  Christ  liveth  in  us  :  and 
the  life  which  we  now  live  in  the  flesh  we  live  by 
the  faith  of  the  Son  of  God,  who  loved  us  and 
gave  himself  for  us."  It  is  therefore  to  be  con- 
templated apart  from  the  ordinary  life  of  faith. 
Nevertheless,  rightly  engaged  in,  it  is  itself  a 
high  exercise  of  the  faith  of  which  it  is  the  con- 
fession— a  feeding  upon  Christ  as  well  as  a 
declaration  that  we  live  by  feeding  on  Him  ;  yet 
this  with  a  special  character  of  its  own.  Our 
ordinary  feeding  upon  Christ  has  its  ever-vary- 
ing aspect  determined  by  the  special  demands 
on  faith  which  successively  arise  in  God's  order- 
ing of  our  circumstances,  but  at  the  Communion 
Table  we  are,  as  it  were,  upon  the  mount  of  the 
Lord,  above  the  region  in  which  the  daily  battle 
of  the  life  of  faith  has  to  be  fought  :  though  in 
the  light  in  which  the  excellence  of  that  conflict 
and  its  high  issues  are  clearly  seen  and  calmly 
realised,  as  they  cannot  be  in  the  fight  itself. 
With  all  its  elements  present  to  our  spirits  we 
seal  our  faith  by  that  special  act  of  personal 
appropriation   of  the  unsearchable  riches  which 


AND  ITS  VALUE.  1 47 

we  have  in  Christ  of  which  eating  the  bread  and 
drinking  the  wine,  the  symbols  of  the  Lord's 
body  and  blood,  is  the  divinely  chosen  form  of 
expression.  To  this  there  is  nothing  parallel 
as  a  confession  of  Christ  except  the  receiving  of 
Baptism  by  conscious  believers  or  that  highest 
Godward  movement  of  our  spirits  on  this  side 
of  the  veil,  the  faith  in  death  which  says  "  Lord 
Jesus,  receive  my  spirit." 

In  the  early  church — in  men  dying  daily — the 
faith  which  received  Baptism  and  the  faith 
which  partook  in  the  Lord's  Supper  worthily 
must  have  been  one  with  the  faith  in  which  they 
would  desire  to  die ;  and  in  proportion  as  it  rose 
to  this  elevation  eating  bread  and  drinking  wine 
at  the  Table  of  the  Lord,  would  have  a  full  and 
perfect  meaning,  yielding  in  the  highest  measure 
quickening  and  strength  to  that  life  of  faith 
which  was  confessed.  The  most  simple  and 
naked  realisation  of  the  truth  to  which  they 
were  putting  their  seal  in  the  solemn  act  of 
Communion  would  not  fail  to  enlarge  men's 
hearts  to  run  in  the  way  of  God's  command- 


1 48  HOW  MARKED  AT  THE  FIRST 

ments  :  while  it  accorded  with  that  grace  of  God 
wherein  they  stood — as  it  still  is  the  frequent 
experience  of  the  faithful — that  the  love  con- 
fessed would  be  more  abundantly  shed  abroad 
in  the  heart  in  the  time  of  confessing  it  Their 
bearing  about  in  the  body  the  dying  of  the 
Lord  Jesus  filling  the  ordinance  of  the  Lord's 
Supper  with  its  true  meaning,  and  that  ordi- 
nance in  its  turn  sealing  and  deepening  the  faith 
of  that  death  of  Christ  which  it  showed  forth, 
these  would  act  and  react  on  each  other  with 
intensifying  power,  and  the  promise  "  they  that 
wait  upon  the  Lord  shall  renew  their  strength" 
— a  promise  to  all  believing  meditation  and 
prayer — would  have  its  highest  fulfilment  in 
the  experience  of  all  worthy  communicants. 

It  has  been  said  that  "  no  Christian  can  fail  to 
see  in  the  Lord's  Supper  the  crown  of  public 
service  and  the  solemn  and  chief  work  of  Chris- 
tian assemblies."  It  had  undeniably  this  place 
in  the  Church  at  the  beginning  ;  and  we  know 
that  there  gradually  gathered  around  the  Com- 
munion the  highest  utterances  of  the  collective 


B  Y  PRAISE  AND  PR  A  YER.  1 49 

life  of  the  Church,  and  that  the  naked  act  of 
showing  forth  the  Lord's  death  as  He  had 
appointed  came  to  have  associated  with  it 
praises,  prayers,  intercessions,  thanksgivings 
such  as  men  met  together  in  the  light  of  re- 
deeming love  would  be  moved  and  emboldened 
to  offer  to  God  :  a  range  of  praise,  prayer,  inter- 
cession, and  thanksgiving,  wide  as  the  free  out- 
goings of  hearts  dwelling  in  Christ  and  partak- 
ers in  the  mind  which  was  in  Him.  This  the 
earliest  liturgies  abundantly  show. 

That  all  these  were  originally  offered  in  the 
narne  of  Christ,  i.e.,  in  the  light  of  the  worship- 
per's relation  to  God  in  Christ — in  the  faith  of 
Christ's  presence  at  the  right  hand  of  the  Father, 
the  High  Priest  over  the  house  of  God — we 
cannot  doubt ;  nor  is  there  any  reason  to  as- 
sume as  to  the  ordinance  itself  with  which 
these  utterances  of  faith  in  God  were  thus  as- 
sociated that  there  was  the  most  remote  idea 
that  that  ordinance  added  to  the  ground  of  con- 
fidence embraced  in  the  faith  to  which  it  bore 
witness.      The  worshippers  knew  that  God  had 


I  50  SYMBOLS  IN  TIME  IDENTIFIED 

raised  Christ  from  the  dead,  and  had  given  Him 
glory  that  their  faith  and  hope  might  be  in  God : 
and  their  faith  and  hope  were  in  God  accor- 
dingly. This  faith  and  hope  the  gospel  of  their 
salvation  had  quickened  in  them  at  the  first. 
In  this  faith  and  hope  they  continued  to  live  to 
God.  Therefore  at  the  Lord's  Table,  with  all 
the  elements  of  their  divine  life  quick  in  them, 
abounding  in  love  to  God,  to  each  other,  and  to 
all  men,  their  life  flowed  freely,  Godward  and 
manward,  according  to  its  proper  nature. 

The  Holy  Spirit,  the  Comforter,  would  mark 
such  seasons  by  peculiar  consolations  according 
to  the  Church's  need.  In  the  record  of  the  mar- 
tyrdom of  St.  Stephen  we  read  "  He,  being  full 
of  the  Holy  Ghost,  looked  up  stedfastly  into 
heaven,  and  saw  the  glory  of  God,  and  Jesus 
standing  on  the  right  hand  of  God."  We  know 
not  how  far  seasons  of  worthy  participation  in 
the  Lord's  Supper  had  their  part  in  educating 
St.  Stephen  for  this  high  experience  of  the 
grace  of  the  great  Comforter ;  but  we  must 
believe  that  all  such  strengthening  of  his  faith 


WITH  WHA  T  THE  Y  EXPRESSED  I  5  l 

had  been  in  harmony  with  this  special  strength 
given  for  martyrdom — that  in  his  witness-bearing 
in  the  Lord's  Supper,  as  in  this  his  highest  wit- 
ness-bearing, his  faith  contemplated  the  Son  of 
man  at  the  right  hand  of  God. 

We  can  easily  see  how  the  ordinance  about 
which  praises  and  prayers  and  the  highest 
actings  of  faith  so  clustered — ever  anticipated 
as  it  would  be  for  comfort  and  enlargement  of 
heart,  ever  looked  back  to  with  the  thankful 
consciousness  of  renewed  strength — however 
purely  and  exclusively  Christ  seen  in  the  Spirit 
continued  to  be  its  interest  and  value,  might 
come  to  be  thought  of  and  spoken  of  as  identi- 
fied in  the  mind  with  what  it  symbolised. 
Without  any  departure  from  the  simplicity  that 
is  in  Christ,  thanksgivings  which  were  moved  by 
the  experience  of  meeting  Him  at  His  Table 
would  take  the  form  of  thanksgiving  for  the 
sacred  ordinance  in  the  use  of  which  this  experi- 
ence had  been  enjoyed :  nor  to  men  abiding  in 
Christ  as  branches  in  the  vine,  and  in  intercourse 
with  others  so  abiding,  would  a  need  of  caution 


1 5  2  FIRST  IN  FORM  OF  WORDS 

in  their  use  of  words  suggest  itself,  or  the  fear 
of  a  danger  of  confounding  the  symbols  with  what 
they  symbolised.  We  know  among  ourselves 
how  Christians  at  the  utmost  possible  remove 
from  the  faith  of  a  presence  of  Christ  in  the 
bread  and  the  wine,  real  or  mystical,  use  lan- 
guage in  relation  to  the  Lord's  Supper  which  as 
to  its  mere  sound  might  seem  to  recognise  such 
a  presence.  Assuming  that  in  the  light  of  the 
reality  of  feeding  upon  Christ  as  the  bread  of 
life  the  true  function  of  the  Lord's  Supper  as 
witnessing  for  the  nature  of  the  Christian  life 
was  understood  by  the  early  Church  and  the 
symbolic  character  of  the  bread  and  the  wine 
recognised,  I  feel  that  we  might  expect  language 
to  be  used  in  connection  with  the  consciousness 
of  receiving  divine  nourishment  in  the  Eucharist 
analogous  to  the  words  of  institution.  This 
doubtless  was  the  case  ;  but  no  use  of  such  lan- 
guage by  the  early  Christians  can  prove  more 
than  our  Lord's  own  words,  prove  I  mean  that  if 
our  Lord  in  speaking  of  the  bread  and  wine  as 
His  body  and   His  blood  is    not    accepted    as 


AFTER  WARDS  IN  THO  UGHT.  I  5  3 

implying  that  the  bread  and  the  wine  then  in 
His  hands  were  actually  His  body  and  His 
blood,  neither  can  similar  words  used  by  the 
early  Church  be  regarded  as  having  more  than 
a  symbolic  import. 

But  though  the  use  of  language  in  reference 
to  symbols  which  was  strictly  proper  in  reference 
only  to  that  which  these  symbolised  might  be 
safe  as  well  as  natural  while  the  speaker  spoke 
in  that  light  of  life  in  which  feeding  upon  Christ 
was  an  abiding  consciousness,  and  while  as  yet 
the  occasional  participation  in  symbols  derived 
its  interest  from  that  abiding  consciousness  to 
which  the  use  of  these  bore  witness,  we  know 
that  it  came  to  pass — through  what  gradual  de- 
cay of  divine  life  we  know  not — but  it  did  come 
to  pass  that  the  symbols  were  in  the  course  of 
time  confounded  with  and  then  substituted  for 
what  they  symbolised.  That  special  quickening 
and  strengthening  of  the  life  of  faith  which  was 
experienced  in  the  worthy  partaking  of  the 
Lord's  Supper  came  in  time  to  be  regarded  as  a 
grace  received  through  the  bread  and  the  wine  : 


I  54  HENCE  A  CHANGE  OF  THEIR  FUNCTION 

until  at  last  these  came  to  be  regarded  as  spe- 
cial mediums  of  life  to  be  partaken  in,  in  order 
by  so  doing  to  receive  the  life  put  into  them. 

When  this  state  of  mind  in  relation  to  the 
Lord's  Supper  was  reached — and  it  may  have 
been  reached  long  before  it  became  the  faith 
of  Transubstantiation,  and  may  have  passed 
through  the  gradually  deepening  shades  of  as- 
sumed mystical  presence  by  which  we  see  Tran- 
substantiation arrived  at  now — then  a  new  func- 
tion in  the  economy  of  salvation  was  ascribed  to 
the  sacred  ordinance  :  and  this  implied  a  new 
faith. 

The  demand  for  a  new  faith,  distinct  from  that 
which  receives  the  gospel  and  is  present  in  all 
divine  life  in  us,  which  the  doctrine  of  a  presence 
of  Christ  in  the  bread  and  wine  makes,  even 
when  that  doctrine  has  not  yet  become  the 
doctrine  of  Transubstantiation,  has  been  noticed 
above.  And  this  demand  separates  between 
the  development  which  we  are  now  tracing  and 
anything  that  might  be  regarded  as  the  tendency 
of  religious  observances  to  pass  into  formalism. 


AND  A  NE  W  FAITH  1 5  5 

The  most  beautiful  liturgy  may  become  in  men's 
minds  a  shadow  and  from  their  lips  an  empty 
sound :  but  the  form  remains  though  emptied  of 
spiritual  life.  Even  when  a  certain  self-righteous 
feeling,  as  being  engaged  in  a  religious  obser- 
vance, gives  a  false  and  delusive  interest  to  the 
prayers  used  in  words  only,  still  this  is  without 
any  change  in  our  conception  of  what  the  pray- 
ers are  in  themselves.  Here  the  case  is  different. 
We  might  conceive  the  Holy  Communion  be- 
coming a  form,  for  acts  may  be  emptied  of  their 
meaning  as  well  as  words.  We  might  conceive 
all  those  full  and  rich  outpourings  of  the  Chris- 
tian life  in  connection  with  the  observance  of  the 
Lord's  Supper  to  which  I  have  referred  as 
clothing  the  Eucharist  in  early  ages — these 
we  might  conceive  of  as  used  in  a  way  of  mere 
formalism.  But  what  we  are  tracing  is  not  such 
a  dying-out  of  life  from  what  once  had  life.  To 
devout  worshippers  a  deep  earnest  interest  con- 
tinued to  belong  to  the  Eucharist ; — deep  and 
earnest,  however  alien  from  its  original  interest, 
and  incongruous  with  its  original  meaning.    The 


1 5  6         WHOSE  STREXG  TH  WAS  MYSTER  Y 

change  we  are  contemplating  is  not  of  a  negative 
character ;  it  is  the  arising  of  a  new  faith. 

I  have  already  endeavoured  to  state  some  of 
the  elements  of  religious  feeling  which  I  can 
conceive  the  Mass  used  in  the  honest  faith  of 
Transubstantiation  capable  of  quickening.  Of 
course  as  one  without  not  within  I  may  seem 
bold  in  making  this  attempt.  Only  there  arises 
a  necessity  for  this  boldness  if  the  claims  of  the 
doctrine  in  question  are  to  be  fairly  weighed  and 
if  the  mental  position  of  those  who  hold  it  is  to  be 
understood.  In  this  view  we  must  attempt  the 
task  of  conceiving  truly  and  correctly  the  faith 
which  asks  our  acceptance,  that  we  may  know 
how  it  has  found  entrance  into  and  how  it  keeps 
possession  of  the  minds  of  our  brethren.  Argu- 
ments urged  not  in  this  light  can  never  help 
them  out  of  error  or  really  secure  our  own  posi- 
tion. 

The  element  in  the  faith  of  Transubstantia- 
tion which  strikes  us  most  is  mystery.  The  con- 
ception of  a  special  glory  given  to  God  by  the 
faith  of  mystery  appeared  in  the  church  at  a 


.     NOT  LOVE.  1 57 

very  early  period  ;  and  certainly  facilitated  the 
transition  from  the  simplicity  and  light  of  the 
Lord's  Supper  to  the  darkness  which  shrouds 
the  Mass. 

We  are  not  to  be  impatient  of  mystery — 
which  encompasses  us  on  all  sides.  Our  God 
gives  us  light  and  we  are  to  walk  in  it  and  to  \y 
rejoice  in  it :  but  this  light  seems  to  have  ever 
beyond  it  a  region  of  darkness.  The  light  is 
not  on  that  account  less  truly  light,  and  to  be 
trusted  in  as  light.  To  permit  darkness  to 
bring  light  into  question — to  feel  sure  of  noth- 
ing because  we  cannot  know  all  things — is  in 
truth  to  do  violence  to  the  constitution  of  our 
being ;  to  which  if  we  are  faithful  we  shall  know 
light  to  be  really  light  whatever  outer  circle  of 
darkness  may  make  itself  felt  by  us.  Let  us 
thankfully  rejoice  in  the  light  and  let  us  also 
reverently  submit  to  the  darkness.  And  let  us 
also  welcome  that  gradual  widening  of  the 
region  of  light  of  which  we  have  experience, 
the  retiring  of  the  circle  of  encompassing  dark- 
ness.      How  far  remaining   darkness  may  yet 


58 


PEACE  IN  DARKNESS 


give  place  to  light  now  or  hereafter  in  the 
endless  Eternity  before  us  we  know  not.  In 
the  meantime  we  honour  the  light  by  obeying 
it  and  in  so  doing  honour  God,  while  we  honour 
Him  also  by  a  right  aspect  of  our  minds  to- 
wards the  darkness,  accepting  our  limits  in  the 


faith  of  the  wise  love  which  appoints  them. 
For~~lf  ^rer-are-gtving  God  glory  in  what  He 
gives  us  to  know,  it  will  not  be  difficult  to  give 
Him  the  further  glory  of  being  peaceful  and  at 
rest  concerning  the  darkness  which  remains  :  not 
doubting  that  what  we  know  not  must  be  in 
harmony  with  what  we  know ;  and  would  be 
seen  by  us  to  be  so  if  God  saw  it  good  that  the 
remaining  darkness  should  altogether  pass  away: 
if  indeed  it  is  possible  in  the  nature  of  things 
that  it  should  pass  away.  For  we  can  believe 
that  much  is  embraced  in  the  divine  conscious- 
ness and  in  the  relation  of  the , creature  to  God 
which  it  may  be  incompatible  with  creature 
limits  that  we  should  know.  Yet  on  the  other 
hand  that  is  a  large  word  "Then  shall  we  know 
even  as  also  we  are  known." 


THE  FRUIT  OF  FAITH  IN  LIGHT.  1 59 

But  this  aspect  of  our  minds  towards  mystery 
and  reverent  submitting  to  darkness  is  alto- 
gether different  from  that  glory  which  was 
supposed  to  be  given  to  God  by  the  acceptance 
of  mysteries,  and  which  came  very  early  to  be 
regarded  as  a  very  special  honouring  of  God  : 
insomuch  that  the  acceptance  of  mysteries  was 
regarded  as  the  highest  obedience  of  faith, 
hesitation  to  receive  mysteries  as  rebellion  of 
spirit.  Faith  was  a  believing  on  divine  autho- 
rity. In  proportion  as  belief  rested  exclusively 
on  that  authority  did  it  honour  God.  All 
that  made  belief  difficult  raised  the  measure 
of  the  honour  rendered.  Mystery  seemed  ap- 
pointed for  the  trial  and  development  of  faith. 
Light  exists,  darkness  exists.  The  darkness 
affords  the  higher  opportunity  of  giving  glory 
to  God. 

Surely  this  was  an  inversion  of  the  divine 
order.  It  is  light  that  enables  us  to  give  glory 
to  God.  What  glory  He  has  in  our  submitting 
to  darkness  is  properly  a  glory  which  the  light 
enables  us  to  give  ;   for  it  is  but  one  form  of 


l6o  LIGHT,  NOT  DARKNESS,  SAVES 

the  confidence  in  God  which  the  light  inspires. 
The  submission  to  darkness  which  has  not  this 


faith  in  light  underlying  it  is  but  submitting  to 
necessity. 

"God,  who  commanded  the  light  to  shine 
out  of  darkness,  hath  shined  in  our  hearts,  to 
give  the  light  of  the  knowledge  of  the  glory 
of  God  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ.''  Such  words 
prepare  us  to  find  light — not  darkness — "the 
power  of  God  unto  salvation  to  every  one  that 
believeth."  But  it  is  in  realising  the  nature 
of  the  light  given, — that  that  light  is  love—  that 
we  understand  the  relative  places  of  light  and 
darkness  and  what  is  our  right  state  of  mind 
in  regard  to  each.  If  the  divine  light  be  the 
divine  love,  the  demand  which  Revelation  makes 
on  the  heart  should  take  precedence  of  that 
which  is  made  on  the  understanding.  The 
essence  of  its  utterance,  as  the  voice  of  the 
Eternal  Father,  is  to  each  of  us  "  My  Son  give 
me  thine  heart" — to  us  collectively  "Ye  are 
all  brethren."  This  was  understood  at  the 
beginning ;    but   it    early    came   to    pass    that 


THE  QUEST  OF  ORTHODOXY 


Revelation  was  regarded  as  making  its  demand 
on  the  intellect  not  on  the  heart ;  and  the 
intellect  meeting  the  demand  without  help  from 
the  heart  only  yielded — it  could  do  no  more — 
submission  to  the  divine  authority,  and  so  not 
love  but  orthodoxy  came  to  have  the  supreme 
value :  with  hard  and  most  unloving  results  as 
we  know. 

I  am  not  to  be .  understood  as  undervaluing 
orthodoxy  any  more  than  as  rejecting  mystery 
or  impatient  of  intellectual  limits,  or  as  at  all 
refusing  to  believe  in  the  supernatural.  What 
I  say  is  that  the  divine  purpose  of  love  to  reveal 
itself  and  impart  itself  not  being  used  as  the 
key-thought,  a  trite  orthodoxy  has  not  been 
attained,  and  the  acceptance  of  mystery  having 
a  wrong  place  given  to  it  and  a  false  value,  the 
sense  of  mystery  became  a  snare  ;  and  a  religion 
became  possible,  and  in  time  was  developed, 
in  which  obedience  in  darkness  and  not  the 
response  of  love  in  the  light  of  love  has  been 
regarded  as  the  God-glorifying  faith.  I  say  a 
true  orthodoxy  has  not  been  attained ;  for  the 

L 


62 


XOT  IN  THE  LIGHT  OF  LOVE 


intellect  attempting  to  systematize  the  discov- 
eries of  Revelation,  not  in  the  light  of  love,  could 
not  fail  to  err,  as  the  blind  would  do  if  discour- 
sing of  colours.  And  thus  it  came  to  pass  that 
the  Incarnation,  not  seen  as  the  divine  love 
opening  for  man  the  fountain  of  the  divine  life, 
occupied  men's  minds  as  a  mystery  by  which 
the  intellect  was  to  be  exercised,  and  to  which 
it  was  to  bow,  and  acceptance  of  which  was  to 
be  the  test  of  man's  willingness  to  hear  the  voice 
of  God.  So  also  the  Atonement — the  develop-  </ 
ment  of  the  Incarnation  as  the  path  of  divine 
love  towards  its  end  of  quickening  the  divine 
life  in  man — not  being  seen  in  the  light  of  love 
was  conceived  of  in  a  way  that  does  not  bear 
the  light  of  love  when  we  take  it  to  that  light ; 
and  so  finally  the  gift  of  God  in  Christ,  Eternal 
Life,  the  accomplished  end  of  the  divine  love, 
lost  in  men's  thoughts  all  its  high  attributes  as 
that  "  eternal  life  which  was  with  the  Father 
and  was  manifested  unto  us  ;"  and  was  lowered 
to  the  conception  of  a  deliverance  from  future 
misery  and  the  promise  of  future  happiness. 


HARDENS  AND  MISLEADS.  1 63 

From  all  this  error  the  light  of  love  would 
have  saved,  though  this  whole  outcoming  of 
divine  love  would  still  have  had  to  us  a  side  of 
mystery  and  incomprehensibleness.  Not  the 
Incarnation  alone  and  its  development  in  the 
Atonement  have  such  a  side  to  us,  but  also  what 
we  might  expect  to  be  light  only,  because  it 
comes  within  the  region  of  our  consciousness, 
viz.  our  participation  in  Eternal  Life — this  too 
has  its  aspect  of  mystery  : — as  natural  life  also 
has  and  the  manner  of  our  being  altogether. 
That  in  God  we  live  and  move  and  have  our 
being, — our  being,  as  it  has  been  said,  reposing 
on  His  being — this  realised  by  faith  gives  the 
sense  of  repose  to  the  consciousness  of  existence. 
But  how  deep  is  its  related  mystery.  So  also 
that  Christ  is  our  life,  while  it  is  at  once  the 
highest  aspect  of  the  great  salvation,  and,  known 
in  conscious  experience,  the  purest  light  of  God 
into  which  our  spirits  are  taken,  has  also  its 
mystery.  This  we  know ;  and  to  realise  it  is  not 
without  a  certain  profit  to  our  spirits.  Yet  are 
we  children  of  the  light ; — the  life  of  love  in  us 


1 64  TRANSUBSTANTIA  TIOX 

according  to  its  proper  nature  quickened,  nour- 
ished, developed,  by  the  light  of  love. 

I  have  said  that  mystery  is  the  chief  element 
in  the  faith  of  Transubstantiation  ;  and  we  can 
scarcely  doubt  that  it  has  been  the  extreme 
development  of  the  conception  of  glory  given 
to  God  by  the  prostration  of  reason  in  the 
presence  of  mystery  which  has  made  possible 
the  development  of  the  Mass  from  the  Lord's 
Supper.  Yet  we  are  not  to  conceive  of  the  be- 
liever in  Transubstantiation  as  having  his  faith 
sustained  by  the  sense  of  mystery  alone,  or  that 
the  feeling  of  being  satisfied  to  move  in  darkness 
in  obedience  to  what  is  regarded  as  the  voice  of 
God  has  been  enough  alone  to  invest  the  Mass 
with  the  solemn  religious  interest  which  it  has  to 
devout  Romanists.  Closely  related  to  the  place 
given  to  mystery  has  been  the  place  given  to  the 
sense  of  God's  greatness  and  man's  nothingness. 
This  has  affected  the  conception  formed  of  God's 
glory  in  the  Incarnation,  for  it  has  caused  that 
glory  to  be  seen  in  the  divine  condescension 
manifested    in   the    Incarnation,    rendering    the 


SOUGHT  TO  BE   CONNECTED  1 65 

essence  of  the  response  of  faith  the  sense  of 
weakness  and  nothingness. 

We  are  weak  and  in  ourselves  nothing,  and 
should  feel  that  it  is  so  ;  but  to  feel  our  nothing- 
ness is  not,  any  more  than  to  confess  our  igno- 
rance, the  due  response  to  the  voice  that  in 
Christ  comes  to  us  from  the  heart  of  the  Father 
of  our  spirits  to  quicken  in  us  the  life  of  Son- 
ship.  The  condescension  that  is  in  the  Incarna- 
tion is  not  the  love,  though  it  is  love  that  so 
condescends  :  neither  can  we,  except  in  the  light 
of  the  love  itself  which  has  come  so  near  to  us 
in  Christ,  understand  the  manner  of  that  near- 
ness— that  it  is  granting  to  us  communion  with 
the  Father  and  the  Son  in  the  Spirit. 

I  say  that  the  condescension  is  not  the  love, 
though  it  is  the  love  that  condescends  ;  and  I 
believe  that  this  distinction  sheds  important 
light  on  the  point  of  departure  from  truth  in  the 
error  that  has  issued  in  accepting  Transubstan- 
tiation  as  a  development  of  Incarnation.  I  be- 
lieve indeed  that  to  see  this  point  of  departure 
clearly  is  to  have  the  key  to  the  understanding 


n 


1 66  WITH  INCARNA  TION. 

of  much  that  has  been  accepted  by  Romanists  as 
a  development  of  the  faith  once  delivered  to 
the  saints ;  which  yet  I  believe  has  been  a  de- 
parture from  the  simplicity  that  is  in  Christ. 
But  to  attempt  to  justify  this  conviction  would 
manifestly  be  to  enter  on  a  very  wide  field.  I 
must  satisfy  myself  with  directing  attention  to 
what  we  are  taught  when  we  see  Transubstan- 
tiation  regarded  as  the  development  of  Incar- 
nation. 

The  belief  that  Transubstantiation  is  the 
ultimate  development  of  Incarnation  seems  to 
have  these  steps.  Taking  our  nature  is  infinite 
condescension.  Having  taken  our  nature,  to  be- 
come to  us  the  food  of  Eternal  Life  is  the  same 
divine  condescension  in  a  further  and  higher 
manifestation.  Therefore  whatever  glory  of 
God  we  see  in  the  Incarnation  the  same  glory 
we  see  in  Transubstantiation  and  in  a  higher 
measure.  In  this  view  of  a  relation  of  Incarna- 
tion to  Transubstantiation  the  faith  of  the  former 
mystery  is  a  preparation  for  believing  the  latter 
also ;    and  the   believers   in   Transubstantiation 


GOD  COMES  NEAR  TO  MAN  1 67 

have  that  faith  justified  to  their  minds  by  the 
conception  of  a  glory  to  God  in  that  which  is 
believed  as  well  as  made  easy  by  the  conception 
of  glory  given  to  God  in  the  acceptance  of  mys- 
tery. 

Here,  as  in  regard  to  mystery,  safety  would 
have  been  found  in  abiding  in  the  light  of  love. 
The  assumed  relation  of  Transubstantiation  to 
Incarnation  felt  to  commend  itself  as  conde- 
scension is  parallel  to  that  real  relation  of 
Christ's  being  our  life  to  the  Incarnation  which 
commends  itself  to  our  faith  in  the  light  of  the 
divine  love.  Incarnation  is  a  coming  near  to 
humanity,  the  mystery  of  which  may  be  contem- 
plated chiefly  in  its  aspect  of  condescension  ; 
but  the  nearness  is  not  so  truly  conceived  of 
when  regarded  as  greatness  condescending  to 
littleness  as  when  contemplated  rather  as  love 
desiring  nearness — union  with  the  objects  of  the 
love. 

Occupation  of  mind  with  the  Incarnation,  not 
in  the  light  of  the  love  manifested  in  the  Incar- 
nation, has  indeed  been  full  of  peril.     We  have 


1 68  IN  LOVE 


seen  how  in  consequence  "not  love  but  orthodoxy 
came  to  have  the  supreme  value ;"  with  the  re- 
sult that  "a  true  orthodoxy  has  not  been  at- 
tained"— the  natural  result  of  studying  the 
counsels  of  God  who  is  love  not  in  the  light  of 
love.  Here  we  are  meeting  the  error  which  has 
arisen  in  the  form  of  a  misconception  of  the 
condescension  of  God  to  man  manifested  in  the 
Incarnation. 

Nothing  can  go  beyond  the  language  used  as 
to  the  greatness  of  this  condescension  even  when 
not  contemplated  in  the  light  of  love,  the  dark- 
ness of  mystery  seeming  to  magnify  it,  though 
this  was  impossible.  The  loss  sustained  has 
been  not  under-estimating  the  degree  of  condes- 
cension but  ignorance  of  the  nature  of  the  con- 
descension acknowledged.  The  condescension 
of  the  Father  of  spirits  to  us  His  offspring,  in 
making  us  partakers  in  the  Eternal  Life  of  Son- 
ship  in  the  Eternal  Son,  is  not  told  in  saying  "  it 
is  the  condescension  of  infinite  greatness  to 
nothingness."  Though  in  one  view,  we  are  in 
relation  to   Him  who  has  called  us  into  being  \^\ 


THEREFORE  IN  LIGHT.  1 69 

nothing  ;  yet  possessing  the  being  which  He  has 
bestowed  on  us,  we  are,  not  nothing  in  His 
sight  but  His  richest  possession  known  to  us. 
"Behold  what  manner  of  love  the  Father 
hath  bestowed  on  us  that  we  should  be  called 
the  sons  of  God."  The  love  that  is  in  the 
Incarnation  is  only  known  perfectly  in  the  light 
of  this  its  accomplished  purpose  ;  while  on  the 
other  hand  it  is  the  meditation  of  the  Incarna- 
tion as  the  coming  forth  of  divine  love  that 
prepares  us  for  understanding  this  its  purpose, 
enabling  us  at  the  same  time  to  understand  all 
that  this  purpose  has  involved,  and  in  reference  / 
to  the  error  we  are  now  considering  to  under- 
stand how  He  in  whom  we  have  Eternal  Life  is 
the  bread  of  life,  and  what  that  condescension 
and  love  is  which  this  expresses,  what  manner 
of  nearness  of  Him  who  loves  to  them  that  are 
loved,  and  how  that  nearness  is  realised,  not  in 
darkness  but  in  light — the  purest,  highest  light 
— the  light  which  is  love.  "  God  is  a  spirit :  and 
they  that  worship  him  must  worship  him  in 
spirit  and  in  truth."     "  God  is  love;  and  he  that 


I/O  THE  TWO  ASPECTS  OF  RELIGION 

dwelleth  in  love  dwelleth  in  God,  and  God  in 
him." 

It  does  not  save  us  from  the  consequences 
of  not  abiding  in  the  light  of  the  love  that  is 
in  the  Incarnation  that  the  systems  devised  in 
the  consequent  darkness  have  been,  as  I  may 
say,  gilded  with  conceptions  of  benignity  and 
mercy  as  originating  the  infinite  condescension 
and  pervading  all  its  development.  The  mys- 
tery commended  to  faith  as  wonderful  condescen- 
sion has  been  also  commended  as  merciful  con- 
descension. But  nothing  could  restore  to  Chris- 
tianity what  had  been  lost  at  the  first  in  that 
departure  from  the  simplicity  that  is  in  Christ 
which  was  in  not  studying  the  Incarnation  in 
the  light  of  the  love  which  has  come  forth  in  the 
Incarnation. 

I  must  be  satisfied  with  what  I  have  said  now 
and  previously  (Part  I.)  in  acknowledgment  of 
the  elements  of  religious  feeling  which  may  be 
connected  with  the  faith  of  Transubstantiation. 
I  must  also  remain  satisfied  with  what  I  have 
said  to  show  how  far  these  come  short  of  what 


NO  W  CONSIDERED.  1 7 1 

is  distinctive  in  the  religion  of  Christ  as  partici- 
pation in  the  life  of  sonship  as  that  Eternal 
Life  which  was  with  the  Father  and  has  been 
manifested  to  us.  Two  aspects  of  religion  I  have 
desired  to  keep  before  the  reader's  mind.  First, 
that  our  feeding  upon  Christ  in  those  move- 
ments of  the  will  in  which  we  call  Him  Lord  in 
the  spirit  is  the  inmost  aspect  of  the  life  of  faith. 
Second,  that  this  calling  of  Jesus  Lord  in  the 
Spirit  is  the  due  development  in  us  of  the 
Incarnation  as  the  coming  of  the  Eternal  Son 
into  humanity  saying  to  the  Father,  "Lo  I  come 
to  do  thy  will,  thy  law  is  in  my  heart :"  accord- 
ing to  the  Lord's  words  "  As  the  living  Father 
hath  sent  me,  and  I  live  by  the  Father :  so  he 
that  eateth  me  even  he  shall  live  by  me."  This 
is  the  side  or  aspect  of  the  truth  that  Christ  is 
our  life  which  is  light  to  us,  and  not  the  less 
light  because  of  what  mystery  still  remains. 

I  have  noticed  above  the  difficulty  of  marking 
the  transition  from  the  figurative  to  a  literal  use 
of  words  in  relation  to  the  Lord's  Supper — the 
transference  to  the  sign  of  what  belongs  to  that 


I72        QUESTION  AS  TO  THE  FIGURATIVE 

which  is  signified.  Such  a  transition  having 
taken  place,  and  such  a  transference  being  once 
realised,  men's  habits  of  thought  have  been 
moulded  accordingly  ;  and  we  are  not  to  wonder 
that  the  same  words  suggest  as  their  natural  and 
obvious  meaning  a  figurative  sense  to  those  who 
approach  them  by  one  path,  and  a  literal  sense 
to  those  who  approach  them  by  another  and  the 
opposite  path.  We  meet  in  early  Liturgies  the 
prayer  that  the  Holy  Spirit  would  make  the 
bread  the  body,  and  the  wine  the  blood  of 
Christ.  Our  Lord's  words  in  instituting  the 
ordinance  of  the  Supper  were — "This  is  my 
body : "  "  This  is  my  blood."  We  believe 
that  we  are  in  the  light  of  His  words  in  re- 
ceiving the  bread  and  wine  as  symbols  of 
His  body,  and  blood,  and  in  regarding  our 
own  act  in  eating  the  bread  and  drinking  the 
wine  as  symbolic  of  our  feeding  upon  Christ. 
Being  enabled  by  the  Holy  Spirit  to  partake  in 
the  divine  ordinance  in  spirit  and  truth  we  are 
conscious  to  communion  in  the  body  and  blood 
of  the  Lord,  and   know  that   our   outward  act 


OR  LITERAL   USE  OF  WORDS  1 73 

has  its  true  inward  spiritual  meaning  in  the 
sight  of  God  who  sees  the  heart.  Thus  the 
Holy  Spirit  makes  the  bread  to  be  to  us  the 
body  and  the  wine  the  blood  of  Christ  accord- 
ing to  the  Lord's  meaning  in  so  speaking  of 
them. 

When. therefore  we  meet  the  prayer  that  the 
Holy  Spirit  would  make  the  bread  the  body, 
and  the  wine  the  blood  of  Christ,  we  understand 
that  prayer  according  to  this  our  faith  and  ex- 
perience ;  and  that  the  prayer  contemplates  not 
an  action  of  the  Holy  Spirit  on  the  bread  and 
the  wine,  making  them  to  be  the  body  and  the 
blood  of  Christ,  but  an  action  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
on  the  spirits  of  the  faithful  making  the  bread 
to  them  the  body  and  the  blood  of  Christ,  i.e. 
making  the  eating  of  the  bread  and  the  drink- 
ing of  the  wine  to  be  to  them  the  occasion  of 
that  spiritual  feeding  on  Christ,  and  communion 
in  His  body  and  blood,  apart  from  which  the 
outward  act  of  communion  would  be  an  empty 
shell.  And  it  is  natural  for  us  thus  to  under- 
stand the  language  of  the  early  Church  until  we 


174  NOT  TO  BE  DECIDED 

come,  as  in  time  we  do  come,  to  some  positive 
dogmatic  statement  showing  that  a  transition 
from  the  symbolic  to  the  literal  had  already 
taken  place. 

We  are  not  however  to  be  surprised  that  the 
same  words  of  prayer,  approached  from  the 
opposite  side  by  men  in  the  faith  of  Transub- 
stantiation  tracing  their  way  back  to  find  the 
first  intimations  of  that  faith,  appear  to  them 
the  unmistakeable  expression  of  their  creed  in 
this  matter  as  having  been  that  of  the  Church 
when  the  prayer  now  considered  was  first  used, 
and  that  so  retracing  the  path  up  to  the  original 
institution  of  the  Lord's  Supper  they  read  in  the 
same  sense  the  Lord's  words  in  instituting  it. 
That  it  should  be  so  we  can  understand  ;  and  re- 
alising this  we  feel  how  impossible  it  is  to  decide 
this  great  question  by  a  simple  appeal  to  words 
when  the  same  words  are  understood  on  the  one 
side  as  figurative  and  symbolic, — on  the  other 
side  as  spoken  with  a  literal  meaning.  In  such 
a  controversy  the  mere  words,  as  words,  deter- 
mine nothing ;    and  we  must   decide   on   other 


B  Y  THE  WORDS  AL  ONE  1 7  5 

ground  than  their  sound  how  we  are   to   take 
them,  whether  as  figurative  or  as  literal. 

In  point  of  fact  we  do  all   decide  on   other 
grounds.      However  much   we   may  appeal   to 
what  we  call  "  the  plain  meaning  of  the  words" 
our  confidence  really  rests  on  that  in  the  mind 
in  which  we  read  which  makes  the  one  meaning 
rather  than  the  other  appear  the  plain  and  obvi- 
ous  meaning  to  us.      The  Romanists  who  hold 
the  faith  of  Transubstantiation  on  what  they  re- 
gard as  infallible  authority  are  really  resting  on 
that  antecedent  faith  when  they  say  so  triumph- 
antly, "what   words  can  be  clearer  than  these, 
'  This  is  my  body,  this  is  my  blood.'  "      Others 
not  Romanists,  neither  accepting  with  them  the 
Infallibility  of  the  Church,  but  who  nevertheless 
have  familiarized  their  minds  with  the  forms  of 
thought  of  the  earlier   ages,  and  have  studied 
these  in  the  hope  of  receiving  help  from  them  for 
the  understanding  of  the  Scriptures,  if  they  have 
not  been  abiding  in  a  light  which  has  enabled 
them  to  prove  all  things,  may  also  come  to  these 
words  of  our  Lord  with  a  power  of  what  has 


I76  BUT  BY  THE  LIGHT 

been  thought  and  believed  in  the  Church  on 
their  spirits  overawing  their  intelligence :  so 
that  though  it  may  not  be  in  the  definite  form 
of  the  Roman  Catholic  dogma  they  still,  without 
venturing  to  define,  receive  Christ's  words  as 
literal,  and  believe  in  an  action  of  the  Divine 
Spirit  on  the  bread  and  the  wine,  making  them 
to  be  the  body  and  blood  of  the  Lord  ;  conceal- 
ing from  themselves  with  a  veil  of  reverence 
their  substantial  acceptance  of  what,  under  the 
name  of  the  "  Real  Presence,"  is  protested 
against  as  an  error  of  the  Church  of  Rome. 

On  the  other  hand  we,  in  the  light  of  the  re- 
lation of  the  life  which  we  live  by  the  faith  of 
the  Son  of  God  to  the  divine  life  seen  in  the  Son 
of  God  Himself,  and  hearing  in  that  light  our 
Lord's  words  "As  the  living  Father  hath  sent 
me,  and  I  live  by  the  Father,  so  he  that  eateth 
me,  even  he  shall  live  by  me,"  and  thus  coming  to 
the  words  "  This  is  my  body,  this  is  my  blood"  in 
the  true  apprehension  of  His  previous  words  in 
declaring  to  His  disciples  the  nature  of  the  life 
of  faith — "  My  flesh  is  meat  indeed,  my  blood  is 


IN  WHICH  THEY  ARE  READ.  177 

drink  indeed,"  can  only  receive  the  words  "  This 
is  my  body,  this  is  my  blood"  as  spoken  figura- 
tively, and  as  conferring  on  the  bread  and  wine 
a  symbolic  representative  character.  Our  whole 
conception  of  Christianity,  our  whole  experience 
of  Christianity,  if  we  are  abiding  in  Christ  as 
living  branches  in  the  true  vine,  living  by  the  life 
of  the  vine,  renders  any  other  understanding  im- 
possible to  us.  The  distance  between  the  two 
regions — that  in  which  the  sign  exists,  and  that 
in  which  that  which  is  signified  exists — might 
of  itself  be  enough  to  prevent  any  transference 
to  the  sign  of  what  is  proper  to  that  which  is 
signified.  This  we  feel  while  admiring  the 
divine  fitness  of  the  material  sign  to  symbolize 
the  spiritual  reality  of  the  Communion  of  the 
body  and  blood  of  the  Lord.  But,  apart  from 
this,  the  life  of  Sonship  given  to  us  in  the  Son 
of  God,  known  as  the  development  of  the 
Incarnation  in  the  light  of  the  love  manifested 
in  JheJ^isarnation,  precludes  the  possibility  of 
our  accepting  as  a  development  of  the  Incar- 
nation   that    conception    of  Transubstantiation 

M 


178  ERROR  HERE  MAY  COEXIST 

which  could  never  have  come  into  existence  in 
the  true  light  of  the  Divine  Love. 

When  I  thus  regard  as  opposite  paths  by 
which  the  words  of  our  Lord  in  instituting  the 
ordinance  of  the  Lord's  Supper  may  be  ap- 
proached the  path  which  men  tread  in  coming  to 
them  from  Romanism,  or  forms  of  thought  on 
this  subject  akin  to  Romanism,  and  that  in  which 
we  come  if  we  come  in  the  light  of  Eternal 
Life,  I  may  seem  to  be  denying  the  truth  of 
what  appear  records  of  the  participation  in  the 
Eternal  Life  of  the  many  men  of  God  who 
have  believed  in  Transubstantiation.  I  have  no 
such  meaning.  To  trace  an  error,  even  so  great 
an  error  as  this  to  its  root,  though  that  root 
be  a  wrong  conception  of  the  glory  of  God  in 
the  Incarnation  is  not  to  deny  the  possession  of 
a  living  Christianity  to  all  in  whom  this  error 
has  been  found.  That  error,  however  serious, 
has  not  extended  to  the  whole  horizon  of  their 
spiritual  vision,  to  the  whole  of  what  was  their 
Christianity.  Church  History  would  be  a  study 
of  unmixed  bitterness  and  anguish  of  spirit  to 


WITH  A  LIVING  FAITH.  179 

any  to  whom  serious  error  in  the  Church  would 
be  as  the  stopping  of  the  flow  of  the  life  of 
Christ  in  the  Church ;  but  we  bless  God  that  so 
to  read  the  history  of  the  Church  would  be 
to  limit  God  and  the  power  of  His  truth — even 
when  corrupted  and  mixed  with  grievous  error. 
Seeking  out  the  evidences  of  the  life  of  Christ 
as  manifesting  itself  throughout  the  ages  since 
His  ascension  to  the  right  hand  of  the  Father  in 
those  who,  in  whatever  intellectual  darkness, 
have  called  Him  Lord  in  the  Spirit,  we  are  con- 
tinually moved  to  thank  God  for  contradictions 
between  what  men  have  believed  and  what  men 
have  been.  Nor  is  it  in  tracing  Christianity  as  a 
life,  in  the  Church  of  Rome  alone  that  this  is 
felt.  WlierL  can  it  be  more  intensely  felt  in  the 
light  that  God  is  love  than  when  the  Calvinism  of 
Leighton  is  seen  in  combination  with  a  spiritual 
life7  which  makes  his  words  to  come  nearer  than 


any  other  to  the  words  of  the  Holy  Apostles  of 
our  Lord,  in  their  power  to  feed  spiritual  life  in 
us. 


l8o  THE  EUCHARISTTC  SACRIFICE 

In  this  attempt  to  shed  light  on  the  develop- 
ment of  the  Mass  from  the  Lord's  Supper  I 
have  contemplated  the  Mass  chiefly  in  its  rela- 
tion to  Christ  as  the  bread  of  life — that  aspect 
of  Christianity  which  I  have  been  now  seeking 
to  illustrate. 

The  claim  of  the  Mass  to  be  a  sacrifice  for  sin 
equally  demands  attention.  It  constitutes  the 
only  essential  difference*  between  Romanism  and 
Lutheranism  as  to  the  faith  of  the  Real  Presence, 
for  which  it  offers  an  additional  and  the  most 
important  final  cause  ;  and  it  affects  ^^  v^ry 
essence  of  Christian  worship,  and  our  conscious 
relation  to  our  great  High  Priest  who  is  made 
not  after  the  law  of  a  carnal  commandment  but 
after  the  power  of  an  endless  life.  (Heb.  vii.  16.) 
But  what  claims  to  be  a  sacrifice  for  sin  must  be 
taken  to  the  light  of  the  one  sacrifice  of  Christ 
perfected  on  the  Cross  ;  our  conception  of  the 
nature  of  which  it  would  change  and  the  results 

*  I  venture  to  say  this  with  the  distinction  marked  by  Luther- 
ans before  me.  See  Dr.  Martensen's  Christian  Dogmatic*)  sect. 
259-270.     Edinburgh,  T.  &  T.  Clark,  1S66. 


RELATED  TO  THE  ATONEMENT.  l8l 


of  which  as  our  faith  accepts  them  it  denies. 
To  attempt  this  has  not  been  within  the  scope 
of  my  present  purpose. 

No  doubt  light  shed  on  our  relation  to  Christ 
as  our  life  must  fall  as  light  on  that  life  in  its  as- 
pect of  worship.  Besides,  the  unity  of  the  faith 
that  Christ  is  the  bread  of  life  with  the  faith 
that  He  is  the  way  to  the  Father  is,  as  we  have 
seen,  so  parallelled  by  the  mutual  relation  of  the 
two  aspects  of  the  Mass — their  unity  as  one 
whole  resting  on  the  faith  of  Transubstantiation 
— that  our  attention  could  not  be  effectively 
directed  to  one  part  of  the  subject  to  the  exclu- 
sion of  the  other.  But  just  as  I  have  considered 
the  reality  of  feeding  upon  Christ  by  faith  as  the 
proper  light  to  which  to  take  the  Mass  as  claim- 
ing to  be  one  form  of  feeding  upon  Christ,  so 
must  I  regard  the  Atonement  as  the  proper  light 
to  which  to  take  the  claim  of  the  Mass  to  be  a 
sacrifice  for  sin.  This  is  simply  taking  the  Mass 
to  the  light  of  Christianity  ;  instead  of  accept- 
ing it  as  a  part  of  Christianity. 

In  choosing  on  this  solemn  subject  to  appeal 


I  82  THE  APPEAL  HERE 

to  the  light  of  Christianity  I  do  not  wish  to  be 
understood  as  depreciating  that  appeal  to  reason 
which  is  more  usual  ;  while  I  am  aware  that  I 
am  speaking  to  a  narrower  circle  than  I  should 
be  were  I  to  place  the  Mass,  viewed  simply  in 
itself,  in  the  light  of  reason,  to  have  its  claim 
on  our  acceptance  judged  in  that  light.  I  know 
that  in  one  view  the  present  is  a  time  in  which 
an  appeal  to  reason  seems  to  promise  to  be  the 
most  effective,  while  in  another  view,  and  with 
the  special  reference  which  I  have  to  those  in 
whose  case  the  reaction  against  the  Reformation 
and  in  favour  of  Romanism  is  seen,  I  feel  that 
an  appeal  to  reason  rather  awakens  a  prejudice. 
Indeed  the  development  of  Protestantism  in 
many  quarters  into  a  rejection  of  all  that  claims 
to  be  supernatural  is  producing  in  other  quarters 
what  may  be  called  a  preference  for  the  super- 
natural and  an  acceptance  of  it  as  indiscriminate 
as  is  the  rejection. 

It  would  indeed  be  wrong  to  defer  to  this  feel- 
ing at  the  expense  of  not  duly  honouring  the  just 
demands  of  reason  or  of  in  any  measure  admit- 


TO  THE  LIGHT  OF  CHRISTIANITY.  1 83 

ting  that  a  real  prostration  of  reason  is  ever  an 
honouring  of  Revelation  ;  which  I  feel  would  be 
to  admit  that  divine  light  can  contradict  itself. 
But,  apart  from  this  consideration,  in  a  question 
affecting  religion  a  Christian  man  in  writing  for 
Christians  will  naturally  take  the  subject  to  the 
light  of  Christianity  as  at  once  the  highest  light 
and  that  which  is  specially  appropriate,  and  as 
having  the  advantage  of  being  ground  common 
to  himself  and  to  those  he  addresses.  This 
course  has  also  the  advantage  that  it  affords 
opportunity  for  the  positive  teaching  of  truth, 
and  promises  that  special  protection  from  error 
which  there  is  in  the  possession  of  the  truth  to 
which  the  error  is  most  related. 

By  the  "  light  of  Christianity"  I  mean  the 
light  in  which  those  are  who  are  alive  to  God  in 
Jesus  Christ,  whether  Romanists  or  Protestants,  . 

and  I  appeal  rather  to  Christian  consciousness 
than  merely  to  the  authority  of  texts  of  Scrip-       . 
ture.      "The  secret  of  the  Lord  is  with  them      /^ 
that  fear  him"  and  it  is  confined  to  them  by  a 
necessity  in  the  nature  of  things.     Though  the 


-1   ^< 


I* 


184  THE  CHRISTIAN  CONSCIOUSNESS 

words  of  Christ  which  are  spirit  and  life  have 
light  enough  in  them  as  presented  for  faith  to 
justify  faith  and  condemn  unbelief,  yet  is  their 
light  fully  known  only  in  the  obedience  of  faith 
— our  proving  the  good  and  acceptable  and 
perfect  will  of  God.  By  reason  of  this  difference 
it  is  that  believers  are  in  relation  to  the  Truth 
not  believers  only  but  also  witnesses. 

Eternal  Life  in  Christians  vindicates  its  claim 
to  identity  with  the  Eternal  Life  in  Christ  by 
its  living  response  to  Christ's  words. 

When  as  the  revealer  of  the  Father  our  Lord 
invites  men  as  weary  and  heavy  laden  to  come  to 
Him  for  rest ;  to  take  His  yoke  and  learn  of 
Him  who  is  meek  and  lowly  in  heart;  the  divine 
consciousness  of  the  Son  in  humanity  following 
the  Father  as  a  dear  child  which  utters  itself  in 
the  words  "  My  yoke  is  easy,  and  my  burden 
is  light"  awakens  a  living  echo  in  all  who 
through  Him  are  partaking  in  the  life  of  son- 
ship,  and  following  God  as  dear  children  walking 
in  love. 

Christ  said  to  the  woman  of  Samaria  "  Who- 


LY  ITS  RESPOXSE  Io5 

soever  drinketh  of  this  water  shall  thirst 
again  :  but  whosoever  drinketh  of  the  water 
which  I  shall  give  him  shall  never  thirst ;  but 
the  water  that  I  shall  give  him  shall  be  in  him 
a  well  of  water  springing  up  into  everlasting 
life."  All  in  whose  experience  this  word  is 
fulfilled  put  their  seal  to  its  truth.  They  know 
that  the  water  which  Christ  is  giving  them  is 
indeed  "  a  well  of  water  springing  up  into  ever- 
lasting life"  and  in  this  consciousness  are  raised 
above  that  thirsting  again  which  follows  the 
drinking  of  all  other  waters  and  the  experience 
of  which  is  the  burden  of  so  many  human 
repinings  at  the  unsatisfying  character  of  ordi- 
nary life. 

In  the  personal  consciousness  of  the  divine 
life  in  humanity,  and  of  His  own  relation  to  all 
humanity  (S.  John,  xvii.  2),  and  seeing  men 
ignorant  of  that  relation  and  in  their  ignorance 
rebelling  against  it,  "feeding  on  ashes  a  de- 
ceived heart  leading  them  astray,"  our  Lord 
says,  "Except  ye  eat  the  flesh  of  the  Son  of 
Man,  and  drink  His  blood,  ye  have  no  life  in 


1 86  TO  THE  WORDS  OF  CHRIST. 

you,"  "  My  flesh  is  meat  indeed,  and  my  blood 
is  drink   indeed."      The  intimacy  of  participa- 

\  tion  in  what  was  His  own  human  consciousness 

■—      ■. » 

which  our  Lord  contemplated  for  us  men  is  here 
expressed,  as  well  as  the  anticipation  of  His 
own  death  through  which  divine  life  comes  to 
us.  He  knew  inHimself  what  humanity  can.be 
when  filled  with  the  life  which  was  in  Him.  He 
saw  it  as  spiritually  a  dead  thing  apart  from 
that  life.  In  love  He  yearns  over  us  to  be 
known  in  us  as  our  true  life.  In  love  He  warns 
us  that  in  no  other  way  can  a  true  life  be  ours. 
In  love  He  assures  us  that  His  flesh  is  meat 
indeed,  and  His  blood  is  drink  indeed.  The 
tone  of  the  living  consciousness  of  meetness  to 
be  the  food  of  Eternal  Life  for  man  is  here.  "  I 
am  the  living  bread  which  came  down  from 
heaven :  if  any  man  eat  of  this  bread  he  shall 
live  for  ever :  and  the  bread  that  I  will  give  is 
my  flesh,  which  I  will  give  for  the  life  of  the 
world."  Those  who  are  consciously  reconciled 
to  God  by  the  death  of  His  Son  and  saved  by 
His  life,  will  express  their  experience  of  salva- 


RESUL  T  LO  OK  ED  FOR  1 8  J 

tion  in  the  living  testimony  that  Christ's  flesh 
is  meat  indeed  and  His  blood  is  drink  indeed. 
For  the  consciousness  in  which  our  Lord  spoke 
these  words  has  now  the  corresponding  con- 
sciousness quickened  in  them. 

The  participation  in  the  light  of  life,  present 
in  all  such  responses  to  the  words  of  Christ  as 
these, we  know  to  be  reached  under  the  power  of 
light,  not  intellectual  light  merely  but  spiritual 
light,  which  while  it  has  an  intellectual  form  is 
more  than  intellect — is_  spirit  and  trnfh  For 
the  history  of  being  thus  children  of  the  light 
and  of  the  day  is  the  quickening  of  life  by  the 
incorruptible  seed  of  the  word  of  God  which 
liveth  and  abideth  for  ever — the  nourishing  of 
the  new  born  babes  by  the  sincere  milk  of  the 
word — the  feeding  with  the  strong  meat  of 
deeper  insight  into  the  unsearchable  riches  of 
Christ  those  who  are  of  riper  age  in  the  divine 
life.  And  with  this  inward  history  of  light, 
imparted  on  God's  part  and  received  on  man's 
part,  God's  outward  dealing  with  men  is  ever  in 
harmony ;    things  without  whether  pleasant  or 


WHERE  NO  PREPOSSESSION. 


painful  being  related  to  the  light  within  as  sent 
for  the  trial  and  development  of  faith.  Doubt- 
less the  measure  of  light  enjoyed  varies  greatly, 
and  also  the  measure  of  Christian  skill  in  taking 
outward  things  to  it ;  but  there  is  this  assurance 
present  in  all  who  realise  their  own  position  and 
calling  in  Christ  that  they  know  that  they  are 
complete  in  Him,  possessing  in  Him  all  things 
that  pertain  to  life  and  godliness. 

If  therefore  the  claim  of  the  Mass  on  faith  is 
brought  as  a  new  thing  before  such  persons,  and 
engages  their  serious  attention,  there  are  two 
questions  either  or  both  of  which  they  will 
naturally  consider  ;  Does  the  proposed  addition 
to  their  Christianity  imply  incompleteness  in 
Christianity  ?  and  does  it  harmonize  with 
Christianity  ?  As  to  the  first  question,  the 
very  conception  of  the  Mass  implies  that  Chris- 
tianity apart  from  it  would  be  defective  in  a 
very  high  degree.  As  to  the  other  question, 
it  becomes  equally  clear,  when  we  consider  the 
new  faith  to  which  we  are  called,  that  it  is 
altogether    alien    from    all    that    we    know    as 


EVEN  WHERE  THERE  IS  1 89 

Christianity.     And  these  answers  must  be  con- 
clusive. 

Those  however  who  from  the  first  of  their  re- 
ligious consciousness  have  thought  of  the  Mass 
only  as  a  part  and  a  highly  important  part  of 
Christianity,  having  so  received  it  from  the 
Church,  are  likely  to  find  it  most  difficult  to 
take  up  this  question  at  all ;  it  so  involves  the 
previous  question  of  the  authority  of  the  Church 
as  claiming  obedience  of  faith  to  her  teaching. 
But  even  if  they  should  feel  emboldened  to  treat 
the  question  as  an  open  question,  the  very 
measure  of  Christian  life  from  which  we  might 
expect  an  exercise  of  Christian  discernment  and 
a  spiritual  judgment  may  really  prove  a  weight 
in  the  opposite  scale  to  truth.  For  all  their 
feelings  to  Christ  quickened  and  sustained  by 
their  living  faith  in  Him  will  have  been  habitu- 
ally overflowing  to  that  ordinance  His  presence 
in  which  has  been  assumed.  How  difficult  must 
it  ever  be  to  persuade  such  persons  to  propose 
to  themselves  to  distinguish  between  what  Christ 
is  to  them  apart  from  the  Mass  and  what  the 


19°  MA  Y  BE  REACHED. 

naked  faith  of  the  Mass  can  rightly  be  regarded 
as  adding  thereto.  And  even  if  they  can  be 
induced  to  make  the  attempt  they  are  likely  to 
refer  to  the  Mass  feelings  which  they  have  taken 
to  it ;  nay,  they  will  probably  even  regard  these 
feelings  as  a  legitimate  confirmation  of  their 
faith  in  its  divine  reality. 

Yet  if  such  spiritual  men,  at  home  in  the 
divine  life,  exercise  a  free  spiritual  discernment 
in  looking  at  Christianity  apart  from  the  Mass 
and  at  the  Mass  apart  from  Christianity,  the 
solemn  truth  may  dawn  upon  them  that  they 
have  hitherto  been  combining  two  faiths  alien 
the  one  from  the  other.  And  if  this  perception 
is  once  reached  the  possibility  of  continuing 
such  a  combination  will  cease. 


PRINTED    BY    ROBERT    MACLEHOSE,    AYR. 


April,  1868. 
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writer,  but  he  is  entitled  to  be  spoken  respectfully  of,  both  because  "of  his 
evident  earnestness  and  reality,  and  the  tender  mode  in  which  he  deals  with 
the  opinions  of  others  from  whom  he  feels  compelled  to  differ."— Literary 
Churchman. 

—  Thoughts  on  Eevelation,  with  special  refer- 
ence to  the  Present  Time.  By  JOHN  M'LEOD  CAMPBELL. 
Crown  8vo.   5-s. 

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perspicuity,  as  well  a8  with  a  grave  and  earnest  elocpuence  most  becoming 
such  a  theme." — Freeman. 

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Challis — Creation  in  Plan  and  in  Progress :  being 

an  Essay  on  the  First  Chapter  of  Genesis.  By  the  Rev. 
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Theological  Works.  3 

Chretien — The  Letter  and  the  Spirit. 

Six  Sermons  on  the  Inspiration  of  Holy  Scripture.  By 
CHAKLES  P.  CHRETIEN.     Crown  8vo.     5s. 

Clark — Four  Sermons  preached  in  the  Chapel  of 

Trinity  College,  Cambridge.  By  W.  G.  CLARK,  M.A.,  Public 
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"  It  is  very  rare  and  Tery  refreshing  to  find  so  much,  hard  thought  and  so 
much  clear  knowledge  exhibited  in  the  compass  of  a  sermon.  The  sermon  on 
'  General  Revelation'  strikes  us  as  being  a  thoughtful  piece  of  theology 
calculated  to  be  very  useful  to  many  minds  at  the  present  day." — Literary 
Gazette. 

Clay — The  Power  of  the  Keys. 

Sermons  preached  in  Coventry.  By  the  Rev.  W.  L.  CLAY, 
M.A.     Fcap.  8vo.   3*.  6d. 

Clergyman's  Self-Examination  concerning  the  Apos- 
tles' Creed.    Extra  fcap.  8vo.   Is.  6d. 

Colenso — Works  by  the  Eight  Eev.  J.  W.  Colenso, 

D.D.,  Bishop  of  Natal :— 

—  Tillage  Sermons. 

Seventh  Edition.     Fcap.  8vo.    2s.  6d. 

—  Companion  to  the  Holy  Commnnion. 

Containing  the  Service,  and  Select  Readings  from  the  writings 
of  Mr.  Maurice.  Fine  Edition,  morocco,  antique  style,  Gs. ; 
Common  Paper,  Is. 

Cotton — Works  by  the  late  George  Edward  Lynch 

COTTON,  D.D.,  Bishop  of  Calcutta:— 

—  Sermons,  chiefly  connected  with  Public  Events 

of  1854.     Fcap.  8vo.   3*. 

—  Expository  Sermons  on  the  Epistles  for  the 

Sundays  of  the  Christian  Year.     Two  Vols.  Crown  8vo.    15*. 
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excellent,  productions  of  Dr.  Vaughan.    They  are  the  work  of  an  independent 

thinker  and  good  scholar."—  Guardian. 

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India.     Crown  8vo.   7s.  6d. 

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and  by  a  'fresh,  simple,  practical  earnestness  of  pui-pose,  which  give  them 
a  great  charm." — British  Quarterly  Review. 

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which  they  are  adapted  to  times,  places,  and  circumstances." — Spectator. 

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borough College  during  Six  Years.     Crown  8vo.    10s.  6d. 


4  Macmillan  and  Co.'s 

Davies — Works  by  the  Eev.  J.  Ll.  Davies,  M.A., 

Rector  of  Christ  Church,  St.  Marylebone. 

—  The  Work  of  Christ ;  or  the  World  Eeconciled  to 

God.  With  a  Preface  on  the  Atonement  Controversy.  Fcp.  8vo.  6s. 

—  Sermons  on  the  Manifestation  of  the  Son  of 

God.  With  a  Preface  addressed  to  Laymen  on  the  present 
position  of  the  Clergy  of  the  Church  of  England ;  and  an  Ap- 
pendix on  the  Testimony  of  Scripture  and  the  Church  as  to  the 
possibility  of  Pardon  in  the  Future  State.     Fcap.  8vo.    6s.  6d. 

—  Baptism,  Confirmation,  and  the  Lord's  Supper, 

as  interpreted  by  their  Outward  Signs.  Three  Expository  Ad- 
dresses for  Parochial  use.     Limp  cloth,    1*.  6d. 

—  The  Epistles  of  St.  Baul  to  the  Ephesians,  the 

Colossians,  and  Philemon.  With  Introductions  and  Notes,  and 
an  Essay  on  the  Traces  of  Foreign  Elements  in  the  Theology 
of  these  Epistles.     8vo.    7$.  6d. 

—  Morality  according  to  the  Sacrament  of  the 

Lord's  Supper.     Crown  8vo.    3s.  6d. 

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plished and  able  teachers,  and  in  these  fine  Sermons,  preached  before  the 
"University  of  Cambridge,  on  the  Divine  morality  of  the  Lord's  Supper,  he  has 
done  much  to  strike  both  at  the  error  of  the  mystic  ritualism  which  founds 
the  Lord's  Supper  on  a  hypothetical  physical  miracle,  -which,  even  were  it 
true,  would  uive  no  additional  sacredness  to  the  spiritual  meaning  of  the 
Service,  and  also  at  the  error  of  the  empty  rationalism  which,  regarding  the 
whole  Service  as  ceremonial,  and  therefore  totally  distinct  from  the  highest 
morality,  despises  it  altogether." — Spectator. 

De  Teissier — Works  by  G.  F.  De  Teissier,  B.D. : 

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Donaldson — A  Critical  History  of  Christian  Lite- 
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8vo.  cloth,   31s.  6d." 

Ecce  Homo — A  Survey  of  the  Life  and  "Work  of 

Jesus  Christ.     Ninth  Edition.     Crown  8vo.    6s. 

Eastwood — The  Bible  Word  Book. 

A  Glossary  of  Old  English  Bible  Words.  Bv  J.  EASTWOOD, 
M.A.,  cf  St.  John's  College,  and  W.  ALDIS  WEIGHT,  M.A., 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge.     18mo.    5*.  6d. 

(Uniform  with  Macmillan's  School  Class  Books.) 


Theological  Woeks.  5 

Forbes — Village  Sermons  by  a  jS'orthamptonshire 

Kector.  "With  a  Preface  on  the  Inspiration  of  Holy  Scripture. 
Crown  8vo.    6s. 

"  Such  a  volume  as  the  present,  which  seems  to  us  to  preach  the  pure  essence 
of  Christ's  Gospel  in  the  simplest  language,  and  vet  with  a  -warmth  and  force 

that  cannot  fail  to  drive  ic  home  to  men  cultured  or  uncultured  alike 

is  as  great  an  accession  to  the  cause  of  a  deep  theology  as  the  most  refined 
exposition  of  its  fundamental  principle." — Spectator. 

—  The  Voice  of  God  in  the  Psalms. 

By  GRAXVILLE  FORBES,  Rector  of  Broughton.  Crown 
8vo.   6s.  6d. 

Gifford — The  Glory  of  God  in  Man. 

By  E.  H.  GIFFORD,  D.D.     Fcap.  8vo.  cloth,   3*.  6cl. 

Hardwick — Works    by    the    Ven.    Archdeacon 

HARDWICK :— 

—  Christ  and  other  Masters. 

A  Historical  Inquiry  into  some  of  the  Chief  Parallelisms  and 
Contrasts  between  Christianity  and  the  Religious  Systems  of 
the  Ancient  World.  New  Edition,  revised,  and  a  Prefatory 
Memoir  by  the  Rev.  FRAXCIS  PROCTER.  Two  vols,  crown 
8vo.    15s. 

—  A  History  of  the  Christian  Church. 

Middle  Age.  From  Gregorv  the  Great  to  the  Excommunication 
of  Luther.  Edited  by  FRAXCIS  PROCTER,  M.A.  With 
Four  Maps  constructed  for  this  work  by  A.  Keith  Johnston. 
Second  Edition.     Crown  8vo.    10s.  6d. 

—  A  History  of  the  Christian  Church  during  the 

Refoemation.  Revised  by  FRAXCIS  PROCTER,  M.A. 
Second  Edition.     Crown  8vo.    10s.  6d. 

—  Twenty  Sermons  for  Town  Congregations. 

Crown  8vo.    6s.  6d. 

Hervey — The  Genealogies  of  our  Lord  and  Saviour 

Jesus  Christ,  as  contained  in  the  Gospels  of  St.  Matthew  and 
St.  Luke,  reconciled  with  each  other,  and  shown  to  be  in  har- 
mony with  the  true  Chronology  of  the  Times.  By  Lord 
ARTHUR  HERVEY,  M.A.     8vo.   10s.  6d. 

Howard — The  Pentateuch ;  or,  the  Five  Books  of 

Moses.  Translated  into  English  from  the  Version  of  the  LXX. 
With  Xotes  on  its  Omissions  and  Insertions,  and  also  on  the 
Passages  in  which  it  differs  from  the  Authorized  Version.  By 
the  Hon.  HEXRY  HOWARD,  D.D.,  Dean  of  Lichfield.  Crown 
8vo.  Genesis,  1  vol.  8*.  6d. ;  Exodus  and  Leviticus,  1  vol. 
10*.  6d. ;  Xumbees  and  Deetekoxohy,  1  vol.   10s.  6d. 

Hymni  Ecclesiee. — Fcap.  8vo.  cloth.  7s.  6d. 


6  Macmillan  and  Co.'s 

Jameson — "Works  by  the  Eev.  F.  J.  Jameson,  m.a. 

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8vo.    1*.  6d. 

—  Brotherly  Counsels  to  Students. 

Sermons   preached   in   the   Chapel  of  St.  Catharine's  College, 
Cambridge.     Fcap.  8vo.    Is.  6d. 

Jones — The    Church    of  England    and    Common 

Sense.     By  HARRY  JONES,  M.A.     Fcap.  8vo.  cloth,   3s.  6d. 

Kingsbury — Spiritual  Sacrifice  and  Holy  Com- 
munion. By  T.  L.  KINGSBURY,  M.A.  Seven  Sermons, 
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Kingsley — Works  by  the  Eev.  Charles  Kingsley, 

M.A.,  Rector  of  Eversley,  and  Professor  of  Modern  History  in 
the  University  of  Cambridge : — 

Good  News  Of  God.      Fourth  Edition.  Fcap.  8vo.  4s.  6d. 

—  Tillage  Sermons.      Seventh  Edition.     Fcap.  8vo.   2s.  6d. 

—  The  Gospel  of  the  Pentateuch. 

Second  Edition.     Fcap.  8vo.   4-s.  6d. 

—  Sermons  for  the  Times. 

Third  Edition.   Fcap.  8vo.   3s.  6d. 

—  David.     Four  Sermons. 

David's  Weakness — David's  Strength — David's  Anger — David's 
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Lightfoot — Works    by    J.   B.   Lightfoot,    D.D., 

Hulsean  Professor  of  Divinity  in  the  University  of  Cambridge : 

—  St.  Paul's  Epistle  to  the  Galatians. 

A  Revised  Text,  with  Notes  and  Dissertations.    Second  Edition, 
revised.     8vo.  cloth,  12s. 

—  St.  Paul's  Epistle  to  the  Philippians. 

A  Revised  Text,  with  Notes  and  Dissertations.     [In  the  Press. 


Theological  Works.  7 

Luckock — The  Tables  of  Stone.    Sermons  preached 

in  All  Saints'  Church,  Cambridge,  by  H.  M.  LUCKOCK,  M.A., 
Vicar.     Fcap.  8vo.    3s.  Qd. 

Maclaren — Sermons  preached  at  Manchester. 

By  ALEXANDER  MACLAREN.  Second  Edition.  Fcp. 
8vo.   4s.  Qd.     A  Second  Series  in  the  Press. 

"  The  Sermons  are  clear  and  original." — Guardian. 

"  It  is  quite  refreshing  to  find  a  volume  so  full,  thoughtful,  elegant,  and  yet  at 
the  same  time  so  sound  and  so  thoroughly  practical  as  this  is." — Record. 

Mackenzie — The  Christian   Clergy   of   the   First 

Ten  Centuries,  and  their  Influence  on  European  Civilization. 
By  HENRY  MACKENZIE,  B.A.,  Scholar  of  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge.     Crown  8vo.   6s.  Qd. 

M'Cosh — Works  by  James  M'Cosh,  LL.D.,  Pro- 
fessor of  Logic  and  Metaphysics,  Queen's  College,  Belfast,  &c. : — 

—  The    Method    of    the    Divine    Government, 

Physical  and  Moral.     Ninth  Edition.     8vo.    10*.  6d. 

—  The  Supernatural  in  relation  to  the  Natural. 

Crown  8vo,   7s.  Qd. 

—  The  Intuitions  of  the  Mind. 

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Christian  philosophy  of  mind  which  has  so  long  been  a  desideratum." — 
Literary  Churchman. 

Maclear — Works  by  G.  F.  Maclear,  B.D.,  Head 

Master  of  King's  College  School,  and  Preacher  at  the  Temple 
Church : — 

—  A  History  of  Christian  Missions  during  the 

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unknown  or  (until  late)  contemptuously  ignored  ;  and  as  accomplishing  this 
task  by  a  fairly  thorough  use  of  both  trustworthy  modern  writers,  and  the 

original  authorities  themselves His  book  is  a  concise,  impartial, 

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Marriner — Sermons  preached  at  Lyme  Eegis. 

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8  Macmillan  and  Co.'s 

Maurice — Works  by  the  Eev.  Frederick  Denison 

MAURICE,  M.A.,  Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy  in  the  Uni- 
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Second  Edition.     Crown  8vo.    10s.  6d. 

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Theological  Works.  9 

Maurice — The  Eeligions  of  the  World,  and  their 

Kelations  to  Christianity.     Fourth  Edition.     Fcap.  8vo.    5s. 

—  On  the  Lord's  Prayer. 

Fourth  Edition.     Fcap.  8vo.    2s.  6d. 

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in  Wisdom.  Four  Sermons  (being  the  Hulsean  Lectures  for 
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Morse — Working   for   God,    and   other   Practical 

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O'Brien — Works  by  James  Thomas  O'Brien,  D.D., 

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Procter — A    History   of   the    Book    of   Common 

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In  the  course  of  the  last  twenty  years  the  whole  question  of  liturgical  knowledge 
has  heen  reopened  with  great  learning  and  accurate  research/and  it  is  mainly 
with  the  new  of  epitomizing  their  extensive  publications,  and  correcting  bv 
their  help  the  errors  and  misconceptions  which  had  obtained  currency,  that 
the  present  volume  has  been  put  together. 

—  An  Elementary  History  of  the  Book  of  Common 

Prayer.  By  FRANCIS  PROCTER,  M.A.  Second  Edition. 
18mo.   2s.  6d. 

Psalms  (The),   Chronologically  Arranged. 

An  Amended  Version,  with  Historical  Introductions  and  Ex- 
planatory Notes.    By  FOUR  FRIENDS.     Cr.  8vo.  cl.  10*.  6d. 

Ramsay — The  Catechiser's  Manual ;  or,  the  Church 

Catechism  Illustrated  and  Explained,  for  the  use  of  Clerg}rmen, 
Schoolmasters,  and  Teachers.  By  ARTHUR  RAMSAY,  M.A. 
Second  Edition.     18mo.    1*.  6d. 

Reynolds — Xotes  of  the  Christian  Life. 

A  Selection  of  Sermons  by  HENRY  ROBERT  REYNOLDS, 
B.A.,  President  of  Cheshunt  College,  and  Fellow  of  University 
College,  London.     Crown  8vo.    7s.  6d. 

"Thorough  scholarship  and  refined  taste,  whose  sermons  are  not  theological 
disquisitions,  but  extremely  careful  and  discriminating  exhibitions  of  different 
phases  of  Christian  experience,  and  earnest  appeals  to  the  heart  and  conscience 

on  great  points  of  Christian  duty The  reader  throughout  feels  himself 

in  the  grasp  of  an  earnest  and  careful  thinker." — Patriot. 

Roberts — Discussions  on  the  Gospels. 

By  the  Rev.  ALEXANDER  ROBERTS,  D.D.  Second  Edition, 

revised  and  enlarged.     8vo.     16s. 

"  It  is  only  bare  justice  to  Dr.  Roberts  to  bear  unqualified  testimony  to  the 

scholarlike  fairness  and  completeness  with  which  he  handles  the  subject." — 

Guardian. 

Robertson — Pastoral   Counsels.      Being  Chapters 

on  Practical  and  Devotional  Subjects.  Bv  the  Rev.  JOHN 
ROBERTSON,  D.D.  Third  Edition,  with  a  Preface  by  the 
Author  of  "The  Recreations  of  a  Country  Parson."  Extra 
fcap.  Svo.     6s. 


Theological  Works.  11 

Romania. — Sermons  preached  at  St.  Mary's,  Eeading. 

By  WILLIAM  ROMANIS,  M.A.   First  Series.   Fcap.8vo.  6*. 

"Distinguished  by  accuracy  of  thought  and  clearness  of  expression." — English 
Churchman. 

—  Second  Series.     Fcap.  8vo.  6s. 
Scott — Discourses. 

By  ALEXANDER  J.  SCOTT,  M.A.,  Professor  of  Logic  in 
Owen's  College,  Manchester.     Crown  8vo.    7s.  6cl. 

"  The  work  of  no  common  thinker." — Literary  Churchman. 

"  Professor  Scott's  many  friends  and  admirers  will  gladly  receive  as  a  memorial 

of  his  remarkable  powers  these  interesting  literary  remains They  are 

full  of  fine  and  high  thoughts;  calculated  to  inspire  like  thoughts  in  all 
readers  capable  of  such  thinking."— Scotsman. 

Selwyn — The  Work  of  Christ  in  the  World. 

By  G.  A.  SELWYN,  D.D.,  Bishop  of  Lichfield.  Third 
Edition.     Crown  8vo.    2s. 

—  Verbal  Analysis  of  the  Bible. 

Folio.     14?. 

Sergeant — Sermons. 

By  the  Rev.  E.  W.  SERGEANT,  M.A.,  Assistant  Master  at 
Winchester  College.     Fcap.  8vo.     2s.  6d. 

Shirley, — Elijah  ;  Four  University  Sermons. 

I.  Samaria.— II.  Carmel.— III.  Kishon.— IY.  Horeb.  By  W. 
W.  SHIRLEY,  D.D.,  late  Professor  of  Ecclesiastical  History 
in  the  University  of  Oxford.     Fcap.  8vo.    2s.  6d. 

"  These  Sermons  indicate  ability  of  a  high  order  in  the  cause  of  sound  theology 
and  practical  religion." — Record. 

"The  character  and  times  of  Elijah  are  ably  pourrrayed  in  the  four  sermons 
before  us,  and  a  forcible  analogy  is  instituted  by  Professor  Shirley  between 
the  trials  and  troubles  of  the  prophet's  day  and  our  own." — Literary  Church- 
man. 

Simpson — An   Epitome    of   the    History    of  the 

Christian  Church.  By  WILLIAM  SIMPSON,  M.A.  Fourth 
Edition.     Fcap.  8vo.    3*.  6d. 

Swainson — Works    by    C.   A.    Swainson,    D.D., 

Norrisian  Professor  of  Divinity  at  Cambridge : — 

—  A  Handbook  to  Butler's  Analogy. 

Crown  8vo.    Is.  6d. 

—  The  Creeds  of  the  Church  in  their  Eelations  to 

Holy  Scripture  and  the  Conscience  of  the  Christian.     8vo.     9*. 

—  The   Authority  of  the  New  Testament,   and 

other  Lectures,  delivered  before  the  LTniversity  of  Cambridge. 
8vo.   12s. 


12  Macmillan  and  Co.'s 

Taylor — The  Bestoration  of  Belief. 

New  and  Revised  Edition.  By  ISAAC  TAYLOB,  Esq. 
Crown  8vo.    8s.  6d. 

"  The  current  of  thoughts  which  runs'1  through  this  hook  is  calm  and  clear,  its 
tone  is  earnest,  its  manner  courteous.  The  author  has  carefully  studied  the 
successive  problems  which  he  so  ably  handles,  and  we  feel  as  we  read,  that  he 
at  least  understands  the  workings  of  unbelief,  while  he  is  under  the  power  of 
faith." — Journal  of  Sacred  Literature. 

Temple — Sermons    Preached    in    Rugby    School 

Chapel  in  1858,  1859,  1860.  By  FREDERICK  TEMPLE, 
D  D.,  Chaplain  in  Ordinary  to  her  Majesty,  Head  Master  of 
Rugby  School,  Chaplain  to  the  Right  Hon.  the  Earl  of  Denbigh. 
New  and  Cheaper  Edition.     Crown  8vo.    7s.  6d. 

Thring — Sermons  delivered  at  Uppingham  School. 

By  the  Rev.  E.  THRING,  M.A.,  Head  Master.   Crown  8vo.   5s. 

Thrupp — Works  by  the  Eev.  J.  F.  Thrupp  : — 

—  Introduction    to   the   Study   and   use   of  the 

Psalms.     2  vols.    8vo.   21*. 

"  Mr.  Thrupp's  learned,  sound,  and  sensible  work  fills  a  gap  hitherto  unfilled 
by  any  of  its  predecessors.  The  book  deserves  to  be  strongly  recommended 
to  all  "students,  not  the  learned  only,  but  all  educated  persons  who  desire  to 
understand  soundly  the  literal,  and  so  to  be  able  to  realize  intelligently  the 
typical  or  prophetical  meanings  of  the  Psalter.  It  is  the  work  of  a  painstaking 
and  careful  Hebrew  scholar,  of  a  sound  English  divine,  and  of  an  interpreter 
singularly  fair  and  straightforward.  We  end  by  heartily  commending  the 
book  to  all  intelligent  students  of  a  portion  of  the  Bible,  more  often  read,  but 
very  commonly  less  understood  than  others,  and  which  in  private  reading  is 
much  more  frequently  than  it  should  be  the  subject  of  an  unintelligent 
devotion." — Guardian. 

—  The  Burden  of  Human  Sin  as  borne  by  Christ. 

Three  Sermons  preached  before  the  University  of  Cambridge, 
Lent  1865.     Crown  8vo.   3s.  Qd. 

—  The  Song  of  Songs.     A  New  Translation,  with 

a  Commentary  and  an  Introduction.     Crown  8vo.    7s.  6d. 

u  Of  the  general  features  of  this  work  we  may  briefly  say,  that  it  has  its  founda- 
tion laid  in  sound  learning  and  good  sense  ;  that  it  manifests  much  acuteness 
in  the  perception  of  slight  and  half  hidden  indications  of  purpose  and  in  the 
combinations  of  minute  circumstances  into  a  probable  and  mutually  illus- 
trative group  :  that  it  is  marked  by  deepest  reverence  for  even  the  words  of 
Scripture,  and  has  a  pervading  Scriptural  tone  and  lively  feeling  ;  and  that  it 
is  written  with  the  most  perfect  clearness,  and  an  elegance  which  one  hardly 
expects  in  such  a  work,  but  which  greatly  adds  to  its  enjoyableness."— Non- 
conformist. 

"It  will  give  unfeigned  satisfaction  to  those  who  deeply  value  the  Bible, 
especially  in  these  evil  times,  to  find  a  learned  and  reverent  scholar  like 
Mr.  Thrupp  bestowing  his  labours  upon  the  commonly  neglected  and  unread 

Book  of  Scripture We  have  to  express  a  hearty  satisfaction  in  his 

revival  of  the  Patristic  interpretation  of  the  Song."—  Guardian. 

Todd — The  Books  of  the  Yaudois. 

The  Waldensian  Manuscripts  preserved  in  the  Library  of  Trinity 
College,  Dublin,  with  an  Appendix  by  JAMES  HENTHOKN" 
TODD,  D.D.,  Professor  of  Hebrew  at  Dublin  University. 
Crown  8vo.   6s. 


Theological  Works.  13 

Tracts  for  Priests  and  People. 

By  Various  Writers.  First  and  Second  Series.  Crown  8vo. 
8*.  each. 

—  Nos.  one  to  fifteen,  sewed,     l?.  each. 

Trench — Works  by  B.  Chenevix  Trench,  D.D., 

Archbishop  of  Dublin  : — 

—  Notes  on  the  Parables  of  onr  Lord. 

Tenth  Edition.     8vo.    12*. 

—  Notes  on  the  Miracles  of  onr  Lord. 

Eighth  Edition.     8vo.    12s. 

—  Sermons  preached  in  Westminster  Abbey. 

Second  Edition.     8vo.    10s.  6d. 

—  On  the  Authorized  Version  of  the  New  Test- 
ament.    Second  Edition.   7s. 

—  Commentary   on  the   Epistles    to    the   Seven 

Churches  in  Asia.     Third  Edition,  revised.   8s.  6d. 

—  Synonyms  of  the  New  Testament. 

Neiv  Edition.     1  vol.  8vo.   10s.  6d. 

—  The  Fitness  of  Holy  Scripture  for  Unfolding 

the  Spiritual  Life  of  Man  :  Christ  the  Desire  of  all  Nations ;  or 
the  Unconscious  Prophecies  of  Heathendom.  Hulsean  Lectures, 
Fcap.  8vo.     Fourth  Edition.     5s. 

—  Subjection   of  the   Creature   to   Vanity,    and 

other  Sermons.     Fcap.  8vo.     3*. 

—  Studies  in  the  Gospels. 

Second  Edition.     8vo.     10s.  6d. 

—  Shipwrecks  of  Faith :  Three  Sermons  preached 

before  the  University  of  Cambridge,  in  May,  1867.  Fcap.  8vo. 
2s.  6d. 

—  Primary  Charge. 

8vo.     2s. 

—  Charge  delivered  in  1866. 

8vo.     Is. 

Trench — Brief  Notes  on  the  Greek  of  the  New 

Testament  (for  English  Eeaders).  By  the  Kev.  FRANCIS 
TRENCH,  M.A.     Crown  8vo.   cloth.   6s. 

"  A  very  useful  work,  enabling  the  unlearned  reader  to  see  at  once  the  places 
in  which  our  translation  is  not  quite  literal  or  defective  in  force." — Spectator. 


14  Macmillan  and  Co.'s 

Tudor — The  Decalogue  Viewed  as  the  Christian's 

Law,  with  special  reference  to  the  Questions  and  Wants  of  the 
Times.  Bv  the  Kev.  EICHAED  TUDOR,  B.A.  Crown  8vo. 
10*.  6d. 

1 '  Mr.  Tudor  -writes  earnestly  and  reverently,  and  he  has  not  shrunk  from  deal- 
ing with  very  difficult  and  thorny  questions,  such  as  the  unity  of  the  Ghurch, 
the  Commination  Service,  the  Athanasian  Creed,  the  Sabbath,  Suicide,  War, 
Divorce,  the  Prohibited  Degrees  of  Marriage,  Equivocation,  Simony.  The 
volume  constitutes  a  thoughtful  application  of  the  principles  involved  in  the 
Ten  Commandments  to  the  circumstances  of  the  present  day." — Christian 
Remetnbrancer. 

Tulloch — The  Christ  of  the  Gospels  and  the  Christ 

of  Modern  Criticism.    Lectures  on  M.  Kenan's  "Tie  de  Jesus." 

By  JOHN  TULLOCH,  D.D.,  Principal  of  the  College  of  St. 

Mary,  in  the  University  of  St.  Andrew.  Extra  fcap.  8vo.  4s.  6c?. 

"  Among/st  direct  answers  to  M.  Renan  this  volume  ■will  not  be  easily  sur- 
passed:  the  style  is  animated,  pointed  and  scholarly;  the  tone  fair  and  ap- 
preciative ;  the  philosophy  intelligent  and  cautious ;  'the  Christianity  reverent 
and  hearty.  Dr.  Tulloch's  book  is  sure  to  be  widely  read,  and  may  be  re- 
commended without  reserve  for  popular  reading." — The  Reader. 

Vaughan — Works  by  Charles  J.  Yaughax,  D.D., 

Ticar  of  Doncaster : — 

—  Memorials  of  Harrow  Sundays. 

A  Selection  of  Sermons  preached  in  Harrow  School  Chapel. 
With  a  View  of  the  Chapel.  Fourth  Edition.  Crown  8vo. 
105.  6d. 

St.  Paul's  Epistle  to  the  Eomans. 

The  Greek  Text  with  English  Xotes.    New  Edition. 

[In  the  Press. 

Twelve  Discourses  on  Subjects  connected  with 

the  Liturgy  and  Worship  of  the  Church  of  England.  Fcap. 
8vo.   6s. 

—  Epiphany,  Lent,  and  Easter. 

A  Selection  of  Expository  Sermons.     New  Edition. 

[In  the  Press. 

Lectures  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Philippians. 

Second  Edition.     Crown  8vo.     7*.  6d. 

The  Book  and  the  Life :  and  other  Sermons, 

Preached  before  the  University  of  Cambridge.  New  Edition. 
Fcap.  8vo.   45.  6d. 

—  Lectures  on  the  Eevelation  of  St.  John. 

Second  Edition.     2  vols,  crown  8vo.    155. 

—  Lessons  of  Life  and  Godliness. 

A  Selection  of  Sermons  preached  in  the  Parish  Church  of  Don- 
caster.     Third  Edition.     Fcap.  8vo.   4*.  6d. 


Theological  Works.  15 

Vauglian  (C.  J) — Words  from  the  Gospels. 

A  Second  Selection  of  Sermons  preached  in  the  Parish  Church 
of  Doncaster.     Second  Edition.     Fcap.  8vo.   4s.  6d. 

—  The  Epistles  of  St.  Paul. 

For  English  Eeaders.  Part  I.  containing  the  First  Epistle  to 
the  Thessalonians.  Second  Edition.  8vo.  Is.  Qd.  (Each 
Epistle  wall  be  published  separately.) 

—  The  Church  of  the  First  Days  : 

Series  I.    The  Church  of  Jerusalem.     Second  Edition. 
'    IT.   The  Church  of  the  Gentiles.     Second  Edition. 
"  III.   The  Church  of  the  World.     Second  Edition. 
Fcap.  8vo.     4?.  6d.  each. 

—  The  Wholesome  Words  of  Jesus  Christ. 

Four  Sermons  preached  before  the  University  of  Cambridge,  in 
November,  1866.     Fcap.  8vo.     3s.  Qd. 

Vaughan — Works  by  Dayid  J.  Vaughan,  M.A., 

Yicar  of  St.  Martin's,  Leicester : — 

—  Sermons  preached  in  St.  John's  Church,  Leices- 
ter, during  the  Years  1855  and  1856.     Crown  8vo.   5s.  Qd. 

—  Sermons  on  the  Eesurrection.  With  a  Preface. 

Fcap.  8vo.   3s. 

—  Christian  EYidences  and  the  Bible. 

Neio  Edition,  revised  and  enlarged.     Fcap.  8vo.  cloth,   5s.  6d. 

"  This  little  volume  is  a  model  of  that  honest  and  reverent  criticism  of  the 
Bible  -which  it  is  not  only  right  but  the  duty  of  English  clergymen  in  6uch 
times  as  these  to  put  forth  from  the  pulpit." — The  Spectator. 

—  Sermons  on  Sacrifice  and  Propitiation. 

Fcap.  8vo.     2s.  6d. 

Westcott — Works    by    Bkooxe    Foss   Westcott, 

B.D.,  Assistant  Master  in  Harrow  School : — 

—  A  General  Survey  of  the  History  of  the  Canon 

of  the  New  Testament  during  the  First  Four  Centuries.  Crown 
8vo.     Second  Edition.     Eevised.     10s.  6d. 

—  Characteristics  of  the  Gospel  Miracles. 

Sermons  preached  before  the  University  of  Cambridge.  With 
.Notes.     Crown  8vo.   4?.  6d. 

—  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  the  Four  Gospels. 

Third  Edition.     Crown  8vo.   10s.  Qd, 


16        Macmillan  and  Co.'s  Theological  Works. 
Westcott — The  Bible  in  the  Church. 

A  Popular  Account  of  the  Collection  and  Reception  of  the  Holy 
Scriptures  in  the  Christian  Churches.  Second  Edition.  18mo. 
4>s.  6d. 

—  The  Gospel  of  the  Kesurrection : 

Thoughts  on  its  Relation  to  Reason  and  History.  New  Edition. 
Fcap.  8vo.   4s.  6d. 

Wilson — An  English  Hebrew  and  Chaldee  Lexicon 

and  Concordance  to  the  more  correct  understanding  of  the 
English  Translation  of  the  Old  Testament,  by  reference  to  the 
Original  Hebrew.  By  WILLIAM  WILSON,  D.D.,  Canon  of 
Winchester,  late  Fellow  of  Queens'  College,  Oxford.  Second 
Edition,  carefully  revised.     4to.  cloth,   25s. 

Wilton — The  Tsegeh;    or,    "South    Country"    of 

Scripture.      By  the  Rev.  EDWARD  WILTON,  M.A.,  Oxon. 

With  a  Map.     Crown  8vo.   7s.  6d. 

Witt — The    Mutual    Influence    of    the   Christian 

Doctrine  aud  the  School  of  Alexandria.  By  J.  G.  WITT,  B.A. 
(The  Hulsean  Prize  Essay  for  1860.)     Crown  8vo.   2s.  6d. 

Woodford — Christian  Sanctity. 

By  J.  RUSSELL  WOODFORD,  M.A.    Fcap.  8vo.  cloth.   Bs. 

Woodward. — Works  by  the  Eev.  Henry  Wood- 
ward, M.A.  Edited  by  his  Son,  THOMAS  WOODWARD, 
M.A.,  Dean  of  Down:— 

—  The  Shunanrmite. 

Second  Edition.     Crown  8vo.    cloth.    10s.  6d. 

—  Sermons. 

Fifth  Edition.     Crown  8vo     10s.  6d. 

Worship  (The)  of  God  and  Fellowship  among  Men. 

Sermons  on  Public  Worship.  By  Professor  MAURICE  and 
Others.     Fcap.  8vo.   cloth.    3s.  6d. 

Worsley Christian   Drift   of  Cambridge   Work. 

Eight  Lectures  recently  delivered  on  the  Christian  Bearings  of 
Classic^  Mathematics,  Medicine,  and  Law  Studies  prescribed  in 
its  Charter  to  Downing  College.  By  T.  WORSLEY,  D.D., 
Master  of  Downing  College.     Crown  8vo.   cloth.    6s. 


Cambridge: — printed  by  Jonathan  palmer. 


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